


How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden Concentration Camp

by Eretsonoferet



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Analysis, Critique, Gen, Movie 3: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Review, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 18:13:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19025251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eretsonoferet/pseuds/Eretsonoferet
Summary: A huge and hugely critical review of the last How to Train Your Dragon movie, by a die-hard fan of the franchise.





	1. INTRODUCTION and METHODOLOGY

This is something between a review, a rant, and a dissertation, presented as a semi-organised stream of consciousness, spiced up with some sarcasm, a touch of rancour, and, of course, salt. I have no formal journalistic background, nor do I have much experience as an essayist, but I do have a keyboard, some command of the English language, and opinions, and, in this case, very strong and negative ones, which I’m going to share with you here, as a die-hard fan of the How to Train Your Dragon franchise.

Before that, however, if you somehow liked this movie, I want to assure you that at least I will not be a hypocrite with you. I’m not going to say that I’m not trying to take your enjoyment of this movie away from you. I am. And while I don’t much care about succeeding, for I don’t want to remove fans from the fandom, I’m nonetheless going to try my best, as I value intellectual integrity above the numbers and statistics of my little HTTYD fanfiction. Still, if I lose any readers over this, so be it.

With this review I won’t of course be telling you to hate this movie, as I have no authority over your feelings. Instead, I’ll be doing something more sensible, by recalling a quote that I used to attribute to Roger Ebert, though my sources seem to have disappeared: _“The friend can tell you if you will like the movie. The critic can give you his best advice about whether you should.”_ In this instance, I’ll try to be the critic, and argue my case for why you _should_ dislike this piece of art, _especially_ if you are a fan of the franchise.

It should go without saying, but since I’ll be linking to this on Tumblr (I know, I like living on the edge), I’ll also remind you that, if you are an obsessed fan of the franchise, and if you prefer living in denial, or if you feel that having your opinion swayed by my review might upset you, you can always skip reading it. In other words, as today’s internet youth might probably put it: “don’t like, don’t read”. I suspect not many people will read this anyway, so I’m sure my voice will be quite easy to ignore within the fandom.

If instead you are up for the challenge (i.e. if you are a _real_ _Viking™_ ), you are most welcome to read this, and even to reply as scathingly as you like. I have a thick skin, and my feelings are all bottled up anyway, so you don’t have to worry about hurting them.

 **However** , and I can’t stress this enough, **please do take your time to read _everything_ carefully if you intend to argue or start a conversation**. It has taken me about two months to put this together, so, unless they are comments of agreement (of which I anticipate none), I expect any of your arguments, even if terse, to be backed by at least a few hours of work and effort.

If your replies are mere jibes or remarks about yours truly (even if delivered politely), if they are lacking in proper grammar, if they are non sequiturs, unsupported dismissals of my arguments, or if I have already addressed the points you bring forth in some other part of the review, I will exercise my right to ignore them. In the latter case, if I feel generous, I may reply by pointing you to the paragraph where I’ve already addressed that specific point. That’s why there will be an index.

Oh, and if I hear anyone utter the phrases “it’s just a kids’ movie” or “it’s just fantasy”, they’ll be immediately considered out of the argument. I’ll still gladly answer any non-rhetorical questions of course, as soon as I have the time.

 **To reiterate: I expect of anyone who wants to put forward an argument to have read this review very carefully, possibly twice. If I get the feeling that you did not, I may not be inclined to acknowledge your messages.** I know how arguments often work on the internet, so I’ll be very strict about this. I understand it’s a long review, but nobody forces you to read it, or to reply to it. (If you somehow know me personally, I don’t mind a more open approach to this conversation, yet still strictly over beer, wine, or whisky. After all, the word symposium literally means “gathering over drinks”, and that is the format I favour for all my debates.)

I shall however apologise for this review’s preposterous length. I know brevity is said to be the soul of wit, but in this case I’m willing to sacrifice my image as a witty person for the sake of completeness and accuracy. I want there to be no misunderstandings regarding what I say, and I want to cover every single flaw of the movie thoroughly and with care. If you still find any mistakes in what I said or in my grammar, feel free to point it out to me. I’m thankful for any suggestions, and I’ll gladly correct any errors.

Now, regarding my methodology: First of all, you’ll find an index of my arguments with a very particular division of the topics I’ll be covering. Whenever assessing a movie, I try to be as objective as I can by use of a special system I devised over the years, which I believe to be the fairest to the medium of film-making:

**Considering a maximum rating of 10 points, I divide my reviews into three main objective aspects, one for each of the major artistic endeavors involved in movie-making.**

  1. **Writable arts:** stuff that can be somehow put to writing or narration and enjoyed by active reasoning, like stories, plots, scripts, poetry, statements and so on. 
  2. **Audible arts:** stuff that can be perceived and enjoyed only through your ears.
  3. **Visible arts:** stuff that can be perceived and enjoyed only through your eyes.



I see every movie as a coming together of these three art forms, and **the quality of a movie to me stands in the balanced synergy of all three aspects, without one being more important than the other**.

(Yes, to me the story is just as important as the soundtrack or the visuals. If the story was for some reason more important, it would detract from the huge efforts made by the other artists involved in the creation of what is by far the most complex art form ever invented. If the story was more important, then reading the books from which movies are made would always grant a better experience, and while that is often the case, it is not so by design, and properly-written movies should, and often do surpass their books, for they have the addition of two further art forms with which to engage the audience’s emotions. It’s a rare thing, I’ll admit it, but, to return to the topic at hand, I think the first How to Train Your Dragon movie did just that, or I wouldn’t be here discussing its sequels.)

Thus, in my rating system, each of the three aspects I mentioned is worth 3 points maximum for a total of 9 out of 10, and this is where I try to be as objective as possible.

Finally, there is one more aspect where I try to relegate all my inevitable subjectivity, namely **Personal Enjoyment, worth plus or minus 1 point, including possible rounding of decimals**. Default rounding is always downwards (8.9 is still not 9), unless there is something in a movie I personally found exceptional and worthy of extra praise. This section’s rating will most often reflect the other sections’ ratings, **but it’s not redundant** , as there are cases in which this rating may be dissonant from the more objective assessments. For example, if I happen to enjoy a technically bad movie, or hate a technically excellent movie. It’s rare, but it happens.

The four total aspects, and thus the four macro-sections of this review, can be quickly summarised by the acronym **S.A.V.E:**

  * **S** for **STORY** _(Plot, Characters, Pacing, Dialogue, etc.)_ : **[+3 points max]**
  * **A** for **AUDIO** _(Music, Sound effects, Voice Acting, etc.)_ : **[+3 points max]**
  * **V** for **VISUALS** _(Photography, Acting, Editing, Design, Animation, Style, etc.)_ : **[+3 points max]**
  * **E** for **ENJOYMENT** _(this is self-explanatory)_ : **[+or-1 point and rounding]**



If you want to have a rough idea of the results produced by this rating system you may be interested to know that my average IMDB rating is 4,97 for 1088 titles. The distribution of my ratings also closely resembles a gaussian (“bell”) curve with the aforementioned mean value, which is not far from median of the spectrum (5.5), thus suggesting that if I’m being at all unfair across the board, it cannot be by much. Also, the variance of the distribution is about 3.1, meaning that with this rating system I still end up assigning most of the votes of the spectrum, and I don’t just stick to 5/10 ratings.

I think it would give you better context if I began with the fourth aspect of the review (Enjoyment) before moving to the meat of my complaints with the Story aspect, and finally to my thoughts on Audio and Visuals.

By the way, if you are only interested in my specific motivations for the provocative title of this review, you _can_ skip directly to ASPECT 1 of 4, part 13, paragraphs: d), e), and f), though I do not recommend it.

 

**SPOILER ALERT **

I’ll be nitpicking _all_ the issues I had with this movie, so expect this to be a long read, with plenty of spoilers for almost every single frame of all three movies of the franchise.

 

 ** ADDENDUM ** 

Whilst in the process of finishing this review, it was brought to my attention, through a conversation that sprouted from a comment to one of my works, that there are indeed others who, like me, found it necessary to criticise this movie by writing their own reviews. I had actually not expected that, nor (rather stupidly) had I spent any time looking for other people’s arguments, as I had plenty of my own to unload onto the page. Besides, criticism of this movie was (and still is) rather hard to come by.

Now, however, it behooves me to acknowledge that there have actually been others who have already addressed some of the points I bring up in this review. While I did not take any inspiration from their reviews, for mine was almost already finished when I came across theirs, I still think it proper to mention the names of the two authors whose reviews I happened upon before publishing mine. The first is **IronGut** , who wrote [_How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, A Failure to Inspire_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18650974/chapters/44230330), the second is **10Blue10** , who wrote [_The Hidden World - A Critique_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18606790?view_full_work=true). Both reviews can be found on archiveofourown.org.

Some of my points regarding the plot are already addressed by their reviews, though often with a different angle, so I do recommend reading theirs as well. For my part, I can claim that this review will be longer, a bit more structured, certainly more scathing, and likely more controversial than theirs. If you prefer a lighter introduction to criticism of this movie, I suggest you head directly to their reviews. Both are very well written.

The two authors also set up a Discord group for people who have taken a more critical approach to this movie. By their permission, the following link is an invite for anyone who is interested in joining the group: [discord.gg/vQxJMcg](http://discord.gg/vQxJMcg)

For that eye-opening conversation, which showed me that indeed there are other critics of this movie, I have **IronGut** to thank. I shall hence dedicate this review to all the angry and disappointed fans of the franchise, who do apparently exist. I also thank **IronGut** for kindly beta-reading this review as well.


	2. INDEX

Below you'll find the index of this review. The actual review begins in the next chapter.

NOTE: Unfortunately the automatic indexing of the most common text editors does not translate well when copied here. The index below will thus not have any hyperlink functionality, but it can still give you an idea of the structure of this review. To make things as simple as possible, each chapter from here onwards will constitute an "Aspect" of my review. The conclusion and final rating will be the last chapter.

 

**\- ASPECT 4 of 4:** ENJOYMENT

**- ASPECT 1 of 4:** PLOT, PACING, MESSAGE and CHARACTERS

    0 - Introductory remarks: concerning plot holes  
    1 - The not-so-hidden asspull  
    2 - Stoick the Vast-ly misrepresented  
    3 - Dialogue for ten-year-olds, between twenty-one-year-olds  
    4 - Alphas needed - Now hiring!  
    5 - This isn’t even my final form  
    6 - Toothless’ biological clock and non-biological tail  
    7 - Sudden sexual dimorphism is sudden  
    8 - The Noah’s ark rule and obligatory romances  
    9 - A poisonous plot device  
    10 - Maladies of incompetence  
        a) The incompetent villain syndrome  
        b) The incompetent hero disorder  
    11 - Character problems  
        a) A lack of character focus  
        b) A lack of character development  
        c) A lack of character in general  
    12 - Back and forth, here and there, now and then  
    13 - There were dragons when I was a boy... and there still are; we just segregated them  
        a) A pointless divorce  
        b) No more dragons?  
        c) Not even a civil war  
        d) The movie’s despicable message  
        e) Where are my Vikings?!  
        f) A Brave New Hidden World  
        g) Wrapping up  
    14 - Cheap closure is worse than none at all  
    15 - Minor qualms (some of these may count as nitpicking)  
        a) The impossible world  
        b) The impossible sword  
        c) The impossible wingsuit  
        d) Convenient timing  
        e) Grimmel’s knowledge of the Night Furies  
        f) Grimmel’s ships have super speed  
        g) From Ferrari to quirky convertible  
        h) How did Valka win over Spitelout at arm wrestling?  
        i) An unlikely reluctance to marriage  
        j) Poor worldbuilding  
        k) A distinct lack of grit  
    16 - Some positive things  
    17 - Conclusion and Story rating

**\- ASPECT 2 of 4:** MUSIC and SOUND

**- ASPECT 3 of 4:** VISUALS AND ANIMATION

**- CONCLUSION and FINAL RATING**  
 


	3. ASPECT 4 of 4: ENJOYMENT

_There was art, when I was a boy_

This being a section about personal feelings and taste, I won’t be using many arguments to explain myself, for it wouldn’t make much sense, as the most logical reasons at the base of my feelings regarding this movie reside in the following three sections, especially the next one. This means that in this case, as in most cases, my enjoyment of this movie was directly correlated to the movie’s quality. This will therefore be the shortest and least structured section of my review. In fact, I’ll just use one example to explain my overall feeling of disappointment with this movie. More examples will be presented in the following sections, with a particular focus on the movie’s failures.

So, as the main example for this section, let’s take what I felt at the very first moments of the movie, for my disappointment could be said to have begun with the movie’s very opening scene. But to explain to you why, I’ll have to refresh for you the opening scenes of the first two movies:

**HTTYD1:** The opening music is one that begins right off the bat with the main original theme in deep brass instruments (I’m not a music expert, so I don’t know whether it was trumpets or trombones or whatnot). It then shifts to Berk’s theme. So the music starts by saying: “Pay attention everyone, for I’m going to tell you an important epic tale” (low brass instruments), thus the adventure is beginning, and our expectations are high by how regal the tone is. (If you are a fan, the opening notes are already playing in your head, so you know exactly what I’m talking about.) Then, as the music shifts to something more celtic/folk, we get to know the village, and, by the music, we can already infer it’s a pseudo-northern-european setting. Vikings! Awesome! Everyone loves Vikings.

Within the next eight minutes, and in the span of _only one scene_ , we get to know _everyone_ and _everything_ there is to know. It’s unbelievable how tight and masterful the writing is here. Only eight minutes, and we’ve set the world, we already root for the protagonist, we already know about all his relationships, his place in the village, and his goals, we know all the dragons and their powers, and, most importantly, we have a major turning point in the story! (Bringing down the Night Fury.) What more could you possibly want by an opening scene? Ten out of ten. What am I saying? Twelve out of ten! Ok maybe eleven, for they had to resort to narration to explain some things, but it works quite well for some reason. It becomes a recurrent theme, opening and closing each movie without intruding in the main acts, so it works as a frame that makes us feel closer to Hiccup, telling us this is _his_ story.

**HTTYD2:** Same trumpets, a little higher, but still very regal and more complex (strings too this time). Another epic tale is beginning. Then, once again, flutes and folksy atmosphere. “This is [still] Berk” but now it’s a bit different, just like the village. We now get dragon racing, and within five minutes we are shown all the changes of five years, except for one: Hiccup. Hiccup’s reveal comes later, saving the best for last with a greatly uplifting flight scene and some awesome scenery.

The following three minutes shout “freedom” and “badassery”. Hiccup’s all grown up, and he is super cool now; a bit cheesy, but not enough to make me cringe. And this is the only instance in all my experience with animated movies where I didn’t mind too much having a modern song play as accompaniment (“Where no one goes”). I still don’t like Jonsi’s voice (it’s too processed and unnatural, which doesn’t fit the pseudo-Viking setting), but the music is upbeat and liberating, so I gave it a pass.

Now, on to **HTTYD3:** The Dreamworks logo has its own music now for some reason, and is thus no longer integrated within the story. Oh right… they were bought by Universal or something. Thanks for reminding me. No biggie.

Then... war drums. _What?_ So no more grand royal opening? Is this just another TV-show episode? Let’s hope not and keep watching.

So, war drums and misty darkness. Oh, ok. We are taking the “darker sequel” approach. Fine, _I_ _guess_ , but I still expect something amazing. And since you are using war drums, I now want battle of Dagorlad amazing. This is an epic tale too, right? I now want things to be epic and dire right off the bat. I want…

_..._ is that Darth Vader?! No… but almost. It’s a masked man in black emerging from the mist with a retractable fire blade, there’s just no lightsaber sound effect as the sword extends, but it might as well have been there. Oh no… and it’s Hiccup! And he’s slowly walking through flames without even coughing!

Remember what I said about Hiccup’s reveal in HTTYD2 being borderline too cheesy for how badass they had made him? Now it’s downright cringeworthy. Unless…

You still get a chance, movie. Own your badassery and show me some hyper-competent team on an important mission where something goes terribly wrong and kickstarts the story, and you can still claim you had a nice “darker” opening. No narration. The stakes must be high from the start now. You wanted a more “grown-up” opening? Then you must grab a grown-up’s attention.

What’s that you say? Everyone (except Hiccup and Astrid of course) has turned into a fumbling band of bumbling buffoons? And they still succeed on their mission?!

Well, this opening is ruined. Sorry, John Powell, there’s nothing you can do now; might as well put on the soundtrack to Benny Hill (you know the one).

Let’s at least see how Berk is faring back home and… _Oh-my-gawd!_ Flashy colors and absurd architecture! Am I on acid? **Where has all the subtlety gone?!** **And only now does the “this is Berk” monologue kick in!?** Six full minutes after that abysmal opening scene?! So it’s not a frame anymore! And, did you notice? **Hiccup is actually talking within the movie _out loud!!!_**

(He may have said the word _“dragons”_ out loud in the first movie during narration, but in that instance it still made sense to shout that word within the context of the scene. It actually made it look like a neat coincidence, which allowed us viewers to seamlessly understand who was narrating, and thus who the protagonist was, without ever saying “this is me,” which was quite a narrative accomplishment.)

By the way, the leitmotif is ruined now. In the first movie it was _“we have… dragons!”_ , in the second movie it was _“we have… dragon racing!”_. Now, in the third movie, it’s back to simply having dragons again, but without the suspense: _“...we, my friend, have dragons. Lots and lots of dragons.”_ Meh. Could you not come up with a better evolution of that leitmotif?

I believe by now you get my point. Right off the bat this movie felt like a huge downgrade, like it was merely a high budget TV episode. It _felt_ as if something went wrong during production, as if, somehow, the whole project was taken up by someone who had no understanding of the spirit of the first two movies, like those that wrote Race to the Edge.

Furthermore, as I’m going to argue further in the following sections, it is my overall suspicion that this movie was designed with only two objectives: attracting new child-audiences who had not seen the first two movies by using flashy colours, and pandering to the long-time fans who wanted more badass-Hiccup/badass-Astrid romance, and who not-so-secretly craved the “feels” entailed by the sentence: _“there were dragons when I was a boy”_.

The creators, however, forgot two very important things in my view: first, that some of the fans of the show have grown up and expect more intelligent writing (or at least not less!), and, second, that most kids couldn't care less about flashy colors, without some emotional investment.

I can still remember a man sitting next to my girlfriend in the theater consoling his crying son after Stoick’s death in HTTYD2, and I remember a couple of adults sniffling too after that scene (I may have been among them). Yet, as I watched this third movie, throughout the whole screening, the kids filling the theater could not have been more bored, and I certainly heard nobody stifle even half a sob.

Now these may all be coincidences, but since they seem to reflect my opinions of the movies, I do feel somewhat vindicated in my estimation that this last movie was not only _not_ perfect, as some in the fandom keep claiming, but also an enormous downgrade over the previous ones, _particularly_ the first one. Thus, my feeling of disappointment.

In conclusion, as far as the aspect of my personal overall enjoyment is concerned, my rating will have to suffer the detraction of the whole - **1** point from the total score at the end, with the certainty that any rounding will be downwards in this case. In the following sections I will present scrupulous explanations and examples for this very harsh conclusion, for why this movie has disappointed me, both aesthetically and intellectually, and for why I found parts of it intellectually and, even worse, morally insulting as well.


	4. ASPECT 1 of 4: PLOT, PACING, MESSAGE and CHARACTERS

_A not-so-hidden world of plot holes, incompetence, moral stupidity, and emotional dissonance_  

 

**0 - Introductory remarks: concerning plot holes**

One of the main problems of this movie is a very common and multifaceted one, which to a lesser degree stains the second, and, to a much smaller extent, even the first movie. I’m talking about questions that, if asked while watching the movie, make the whole thing fall apart. In other words: plot holes and inconsistencies (of both events and characters). It’s a recurrent problem in all movies for kids (and most movies for adults too), but in The Hidden World I found it particularly disappointing, because in the first movie of the franchise (the best one by far in my estimation) this problem was uncommonly well handled.

In the case of the first movie, such holes and inconsistencies were small, and it was relatively easy (even for me!) to suspend disbelief around them. This is a testament to the first movie’s simplicity. And yes, that _is_ a compliment. Simpler stories are always, _always,_ better than epic and/or convoluted plots, which strive to appear sophisticated. In almost every case that concerns the mainstream production of stories (big budget animation in this instance), going for complexity (either moral, or narrative) results in disaster. My suggestion in art will always be: unless you are a genius, keep it simple, and you may still reach exceptional results.

Let me clarify something before I go on: **plot holes are very grave errors** , and, in my view, they should be treated as such. Alas, it seems to me that most movie-watchers nowadays consider it perfectly alright to take such errors lightly, or to dismiss them for how common they are, or to accuse people of nitpicking whenever they are pointed out. I, for one, disapprove of this attitude.

I view the art of writing stories (or any other artistic endeavor) much like a process of engineering, which is not at all a contradiction in my view, especially if you consider that the Greek word for art means both “art” and “craft”. When writing a story, much like when building a bridge (an apt parallel if I may say so myself), one must work hard and follow strict rules to make sure things don’t break down or fall apart. A bridge that falls under its own weight is a failure, and (usually) engineers who build such bridges suffer criminal charges.

Writers of course don’t have the lives of other people in their hands, so criminal charges would probably be pushing things a little too far, but I do think their stories should be judged harshly and critically when they crumble under their own weight. **Plot holes are thus the metric by which one should judge a plot’s solidity, which, for me, is the most important property of any story, much like with any bridges that I plan on crossing.** A story must “function” _before_ it can be beautiful, engaging, or exciting. If a story relies on the stupidity or inattentiveness of its audience to be enjoyable, then it is an unredeemable failure in my eyes. (Yes, there are very few stories I enjoy; welcome to my world.)

But what makes plot holes come about? I’ve narrowed it down to three possible causes: incompetent writing, careless writing, or compromises. In the latter case, the most forgivable perhaps, the problem is that **the only situation in which a compromise is a good thing, is when it is the result of a democratic process. Art, however, is not a democracy.** The abilities and dedication of a creative mind must be given full freedom, in order to produce good, consistent art. (I’m sure you know what they say about things that are “designed by committee”.) When creative freedom is allowed, it is then only the lack of either skill or dedication that makes mistakes inevitable.

In the case of the HTTYD finale I don’t know _what_ exactly gave rise to the plot holes I see. Compromises? Lack of dedication? Or lack of skill? The fact is, while I’d be very interested to find out, it is ultimately not important. **The only thing that matters is the end result.**

So, what are these calamitous, plot-hole-opening questions that in my estimation make the whole movie fall apart? Let’s list some, among other concerns.

 **Please note that the answers you may come up with by yourself are not valid unless they are answers the movie has already provided, and which I somehow missed. In other words, if there are any answers to my questions, you should be able to clearly point them out to me on the movie’s timeline. I shan’t accept any outside references from the movies as evidence (no tv shows, no comics, no tweets).** It’s true that a movie doesn’t have to explain everything, but when something related to continuity is impossible to infer with some degree of certainty from context, then the movie is required to explain it (or to explain why it doesn’t explain it), otherwise it only disrupts continuity and consistency, leaving a gap in the plot. That’s what a plot-hole is, after all.

 

**1 - The not-so-hidden asspull**

Let’s begin with question one: Why did the Hidden World never come up in the previous movies? If it was so important to Stoick, why was it never mentioned? If Valka spent 20 years saving dragons around the world, how come she never stumbled upon even a rumor of it? And shouldn’t Valka have already known about the stories regarding the Hidden World before leaving Berk? Did Stoick somehow keep that rumour a secret? How? And why? Or did Stoick learn of it only after Valka’s disappearance? If so, what a convenient coincidence.

And still, how was it that only Stoick heard of this rumour? Did nobody else on Berk hear of it? Does nobody else in the world believe it? Did these sailors’ _“tall tales”,_ as Astrid called them, never reach a curious dragon-trapper’s ears?

I think the scientific expression that properly defines the whole idea behind this movie is “asspull” _,_ and I’m afraid a few badly-placed, inconsistent flashbacks (see next section) can’t help conceal that fact.

And to those who’d object by saying: “but that’s how the books ended!”, it does not answer any of my questions, so it’s irrelevant. Besides, I’ll remind you that the movies diverged heavily from the books, and if there are any similarities, it’s because of the director’s freedom to cherry pick ideas from the books. The point here is that the decision to cherry pick the ending from the books, in the way that it was ultimately implemented, came clearly far too late, without allowing for enough foreshadowing and a proper setup. This makes it no less of an asspull. Maybe it’s an uninspired asspull, but, if anything, that’s even worse.

Broken premises like this one are, unfortunately, unfixable. They should have changed the premises, and made it so that nobody in the world knew of the Hidden World, so that Hiccup could be (somehow) the first to learn of it, thus ensuring at the same time that it would truly be a safe place for the dragons. Alas, they wanted Stoick to play a part in this movie at all costs, so here we are, with a broken movie right off the bat.

This simple yet central matter is already enough to make the whole movie fall apart in my view, but, of course, we are just getting started. I have many many more questions to ask, and far larger flaws to point out.

 

**2 - Stoick the Vast-ly misrepresented**

In the context of the first two movies, is it really reasonable to assume that Stoick the Vast, the man who obeyed his father when ordered to hit a rock with his head (breaking that rock in the process), the man of whom it’s said that when he was a baby _“he popped a dragon’s head off its shoulders”_ , the man who more or less disowned his son for befriending a dragon (!!!), the most pragmatic Viking on Berk, was also the kind of man who kept meticulous journals and maps of a fairy-tale place so that he could one day peacefully stop the bloodshed on both sides?

I maintain that he was never that man, and that his character in the third movie has thus been swapped with that of a different, much more dull, much less _stoic_ kind of Stoick. In fact, in the utterly unnecessary flashbacks, we were only shown a pitiful counterfeit of what was supposed to be one of the greatest, most admirable characters of the franchise. I thus submit to you that Stoick the Vast has actually died twice in these movies: the first time he was killed by Toothless, the second time his character was assassinated by the writers themselves, and I have yet to hear enough outrage about it.

And since I brought up the flashbacks: why did they use flashbacks?! They are an awful narrative device. They only work when they are an integral part of the story, usually in mysteries or detective stories. When you use them to recap an event, or, even worse, to inform the audience about an event you forgot to mention sooner in a more cohesive way, then they are simply a sign of lazy writing, or a sign that you don’t trust your audience to understand or to remember.

In this particular case we are shown a bit of Stoick’s past, and his words to a baby Hiccup (who was super cute, I’ll have to admit it). What did we learn? Nothing that was not repeated by Hiccup moments later to the rest of the village, or that could not have been explained within the main timeline.

Did they think that, just because they threw in a flashback, the whole idea would look like less of an asspull? Well, it did not work, and they butchered Stoick’s character in the process. Maybe they had already paid Gerard Butler, and they had to use him somehow, even to the detriment of the franchise. Otherwise, why not have Valka make the supposed discovery that was attributed to Stoick? It would have been far more plausible, and it would have given a living side-character more screen time and interaction with the protagonists.

There goes character consistency.

 

**3 - Dialogue for ten-year-olds, between twenty-one-year-olds**

In a kids’ movie, most people may find it acceptable for fifteen-year-olds to talk like ten-year-olds (not me), but I don’t think it could ever be considered acceptable for twenty-one-year-olds to still be talking like ten-year-olds. Why doesn’t anyone of the gang act their age in this movie? Have they not grown up at all? The side-characters still cackle at stupid jokes. I know the movie is for children, but the characters in it are not, and seeing them behave that way is, at the very least, disconcerting.

Also, Dreamworks dear, I know you want to target a lowbrow audience, and I know you became famous with Shrek and fart jokes, but can we step up the game when it comes to dialogue?

ASTRID: _“What are you going to do about it?”_

HICCUP: _“Probably something stupid.”_

ASTRID: _“That’s the Hiccup I know.”_

 _Hmm..._ just like my favourite sitcom; I can almost hear the fake laughs and claps. Are we serious?! This is a multi-million dollar movie with a (supposedly) epic plot! I’m not asking for Shakespeare, but take it easy on the cheese! Here, let me fix it for you:

ASTRID: _“What are you going to do about it?”_

HICCUP: _“Probably something stupid.”_

_Astrid smiles fondly, though a hint of concern shows through her eyes._

There. Now they even feel more grown up. And I know you are masters of animation at Dreamworks. I’ve seen Hiccup’s facial expressions as Stoick and Valka danced in the second movie. You could have pulled it off.

For one more example: what’s with Hiccup’s one-liners: “You always have my back bud’.” Is this really something you have to tell to a partner with whom you’ve been fighting for years? But of course they are telling us, the audience, to remind us Hiccup and Toothless work together in perfect harmony. We are not stupid, Dreamworks. Even ten year olds are not that stupid. If you wanted to show perfect harmony, you should have actually _shown_ it, instead of telling us about it through dialogue. And if you are going to write dialogue between adult characters, at the very least try to keep up with the first movie. Where’s the dry wit of _“thank you for nothing, you useless reptile”_?

And since I’m talking about Hiccup’s lines: in the first flashback, when talking about where dragons came from, why did they have Hiccup ask his father: “ _even Night Furies? [come from that place]”_. Hiccup’s particular curiosity about Night Furies had been shown to only develop in the first movie after Toothless spared his life. We saw Hiccup browse through the book of dragons as if for the first time. Why did they have to bring such (I’ll admit mild) inconsistency into the flashback? It served absolutely no purpose, and it could have been avoided easily.

By the way, I was given the impression that pre-HTTYD2 Berkians had always believed dragons came from Helheim’s gate (the “nest”). Why does Stoick in this movie’s flashback seem to suddenly think they all actually came from a Hidden World of which he had no proof? Never was it suggested that the “nest” could be one of many. Again, you can’t change the premises you set up in a previous movie!

 _“One day I’ll find the Hidden world, and seal it up.”_ WHAT?! Didn’t you say in the first movie your objective was _destroying_ the dragon’s nest in Helheim’s gate?! This is an error in continuity my view, and it could have been avoided by discarding the dreadful flashbacks altogether.

As for the way Stoick speaks, I don’t believe a pre-HTTYD1 Stoick would have said _“One day I’ll find the Hidden World, and seal it up.”_ Even to a child, he would have obviously said: “One day I’ll find the Hidden World, and destroy it.” He did after all say he was going to literally _“destroy”_ the nest in HTTYD1. But this only goes to show how much his character has been actually destroyed in those flashbacks. It only takes a line of dialogue to break everything. I can only hope a director’s cut may one day fix at least this problem. In this case, it’s only about removing things.

As for the other characters: Snotlout’s lines have become more annoying than ever. _“Who died and made you chief?”_ (minute 35) Really? I adore dark humour, but the writers need to time it better. Had this joke been made immediately after Stoick’s death, it would have been funny. Inappropriate, but also funny for that very reason. Now it’s only mildly inappropriate, which makes it not funny at all. And him flirting with Valka? Regardless of whether it was funny or not, I just don’t see it happening.

I have to say it, Snotlout was written better in the tv series than in this movie, as were the twins, though I’ll admit I grinned at Ruffnut’s monologue in her cell. I had still hoped she’d be smart enough to not fall into Grimmel’s obvious trap, perhaps by leading Grimmel into a trap of her own, but alas, they can’t let any side-characters be competent, lest they take the spotlight away from the protagonist. What a shame.

 

**4 - Alphas needed - Now hiring!**

Was there really no other alpha in the Hidden World? Why did no one challenge Toothless when he got there? Did Toothless happen to arrive the instant an old alpha died, just in time to fill the vacant spot? Was there a temporary power gap? Or did a coup d'etat take place offscreen?

And what’s with his presidential inauguration? Him in black, dragon-wife in suffragette-white just a step behind him in a display of “proper” feminine, first-lady-like support, atop a white rock with the masses hailing below them, all with the same form of wing-bow/salute, and only half an hour after their messianic arrival. Such high concentrations of cliché mixed with fascistic undertones can actually be poisonous, _Dean!_ How did this get past the test screenings?! What a cringefest.

Also why were the dragons saluting?! They didn’t do it at the end of HTTYD2. They only bowed then. Did the local dragons have different traditions? Can anyone explain how dragon society works?! Because this movie clearly can’t.

More importantly, why did the local dragons accept Toothless? I thought he was accepted by the dragons on Berk because he had managed to defeat the evil bewilderbeast. What did Toothless do to gain the subservience of what’s portrayed as every last dragon on the planet? I’ll answer this last one: nothing! He did absolutely nothing. He just had to appear with his white marshmallow wife and suddenly _“now that’s a king”_. Hear that kids? Get the hint. (Where’s all the SJWs when you need them?)

In addition, after we see him being basically crowned king, we also see Toothless saving Hiccup and bringing him and Astrid back to the island. First: why can’t Toothless, if he’s king, command the dragons not to harm Hiccup and Astrid? Second: why are the other dragons not following him? Their king was just crowned, and now he’s leaving?! Did they all assume it was time for him to take a vacation after 10 seconds of kinghood? For all we know it’s so easy to become king of the dragons that, when Toothless finally returns to the Hidden World, some other dragon is bound to have taken his place as alpha. The whole situation in the Hidden World is just absurd, and is made so just for plot convenience.

By the way, why was Drago’s bewilderbeast in the Hidden World? (I’m sure everyone noticed him, broken tusk and all.) How did he get there? And how could he possibly get out of there if he can’t fly? Why do I get the feeling he looks much smaller than before? What does it mean that he’s there? More importantly, where is Drago? Does he know too about the Hidden World? It would change a lot in Hiccup’s plans if he did. And why does the evil bewilderbeast accept Toothless right away as its king? Are there no feelings on the matter on his part? You can’t just wedge in that kind of information and then avoid questioning! This cameo demands some answers, damnit!

 

**5 - This isn’t even my final form**

First, how exactly does invisibility work? (Aside from “very conveniently for the plot”.) When the Light Fury is caged at the beginning of the story, she seems to be able to activate her invisibility at will, yet in further scenes within the movie it seems that she actually needs to heat up her scales by flying through her fireblast to activate it. Also, why does Toothless have that same power? And why does he need lightning to activate it instead? This feels so contrived, and also quite pointless, which leads me to the following point:

Why is invisibility a necessary power? Nowhere in the movie was a situation solvable _solely_ by use of that power, especially with regard to Toothless. They should have found more ingenious ways around those situations in order to avoid adding to the powers of the Night Furies, who are already comfortably overpowered. Did they forget they are already the fastest, stealthiest dragons, with the most powerful and precise fire blasts? How about using that? Oh, but that wasn’t enough was it? They needed invisibility too.

But wait: _Toothless gains +1000XP for getting laid! Toothless has reached level 10! Toothless learns “Lightning-something-attack which somehow doesn’t electrocute its rider”!_

What’s next? I mean, seriously, what’s next? Teleportation? Lasers? Kage Bunshin no Jutsu? This is way beyond ridiculous, especially after you consider the very convenient timing of the powerup, and by timing I mean the (I assume) week before the final confrontation in this movie. How convenient was it that he learnt of that power just a few days before having to use it? The answer: too much for my suspension of disbelief.

I’m aware of course that there was a sudden powerup in the second movie too, and that it was very last-minute, but that one worked because it was handled much more competently: After a major death, after everything the protagonists had gone through, after being given no reason to believe that they could still win, and only after reaching the brink of losing all hope did Toothless “explode” with rage ( _without_ summoning any lightning, by the way), and I don’t know about you, but I distinctly recall suppressing the urge to stand up and yell “fuck yeah!” in the movie theater, despite knowing, deep down, that it was still a shameful deus ex machina. Does any powerup in the third movie offer such catharsis? Not only does it not, but it also cannot, for one simple reason: convenient powerups can only be pulled off once (if they can be pulled off at all). After that, they plunge immediately into the most boring of clichés.

And by the way, let’s talk about the one power Toothless does not have (or does he?). I’m referring to the ability to control other dragons’ minds. I was led to believe that every alpha (aka: the bewilderbeasts) had this ability, with Toothless being the exception (aside perhaps for the queen, who is somehow never mentioned again in the franchise, either as an alpha or otherwise, which I find absurd). I hence assumed that the other dragons followed Toothless out of trust.

However, leading with mere trust ought to entail quite a few possible difficulties, such as dragons disagreeing over what to do or where to go. So, how come all the dragons invariably obey either Toothless, or their humans, or whomever seems convenient at the time? The mechanics of the relationship between humans and dragons, and between dragons and other dragons, started bugging me ever since the second movie, and I think they should have provided more answers on the matter, but I have more to say on this in section 13.

Last, I wanted to bring some attention to Grimmel’s statement that Night Furies cannot survive in the cold, nor can they fly long distances without rest. It’s good that they have some shortcomings at least, but… uhh… when was this established?! Not only are the powerups convenient to the plot, but now also the powerdowns? Come on!

 

**6 - Toothless’ biological clock and non-biological tail**

Since we are talking about Toothless: has Toothless _just now_ hit puberty? That’s oddly convenient for the plot. And why are we shown him rubbing himself on a rock in masturbatory fashion? That was a bit cringey, but not for the act itself, which I find natural and surprisingly honest, but for the timing, and for the reaction of the cast. Am I to assume that in the last six years Toothless had never been horny, and only after seeing a Light Fury did his libido switch on? That’s not how libido works.

By the way, I’ve read the online posts of people arguing that “Toothless did not abandon Hiccup for the Light Fury”, yet all those posts seem to fit into two main fallacious arguments. On the one hand there are those chanting the aforementioned statement like a mantra without providing any proof, as if repeating it makes it true. On the other, there are those claiming that it was ultimately duty and responsibility that led Toothless to leave Hiccup, not sex or romance, but again, without providing any form of proof.

This last interpretation is certainly an admirable one, but it does not seem to reflect the facts, does it? It instead seems to me that **99% of Toothless’ scenes actually showcased Toothless being far, _far_ more preoccupied with either wooing, chasing after, protecting, or otherwise prioritizing the Light Fury, rather than on his duty as alpha. **Look closely: throughout the entire movie Toothless doesn’t give a single damn about the other dragons. In fact, he immediately orders every other dragon to walk into Grimmel’s cages when the Light Fury is taken hostage. Why, pray tell, do the other dragons respect or follow Toothless again? He’s an abysmal leader.

It is only in the final goodbye scene that Toothless seems to realize that (for some unfathomable reason) humans and dragons should separate forever, and still, it’s not even his own realization, but Hiccup’s. Once again, **duty seems to be the last of Toothless’ concerns**. Just watch the movie again please, and try to find a single frame in which Toothless shows some concern for the well-being of his species. You won’t find any.

Sure, Toothless seems to understand and agree with Hiccup’s decision at the very end, but if the writers wanted to make Toothless grow to his full height as a leader of dragon-kind, if they wanted to portray him as prioritising responsibility and duty over romance and sex, they failed, so people claiming “Toothless did not abandon Hiccup for the Light Fury” are simply exercising their abilities of self-deceit. We all saw the same movie, and while some things are open to interpretation, others are not. Toothless in this movie is just a horrible character from any angle.

Besides, had the more admirable interpretation had any grounds (and I do prefer the idea over what the movie actually did, don’t get me wrong), it would have made the character of the Light Fury obsolete. If it was duty that led Toothless to abandon Hiccup, then their separation should have occurred without the romantic/sexual incentive, so as to make sure the audience got the message more clearly. In fact, as I’m going to argue again in the following sections, **the love interest should have never been introduced in the first place**.

Still, regardless of my preferences, the movie seems to support the love/sexual-interest interpretation far more strongly. Even Dean de Blois himself defined the Light Fury as Toothless’ _“call of the wild”_. So, to put it vulgarly, it does seem quite a bit more likely that Toothless abandoned Hiccup because he was horny, rather than for the sake of his fellow dragons. I guess the power of boners is stronger than the responsibility for one’s entire species. (It certainly could be for me, but I don't claim to be a particularly admirable person.)

And to those (admittedly few) who feel comfortable playing the “he fell in love” card: just because you are the last two Furies in the world (and it appears one of them is not) cannot mean you are suddenly in love. I could understand Toothless wanting to woo and ultimately have sex with the Light Fury a couple of times, and I could even understand his fascination and attraction to her, but I don’t see the Toothless we have been shown so far forsaking his best friend and, even more importantly, the very human who makes him capable of flying, all in less than a couple of days of meeting the Light Fury.

I know Grimmel said that _“Night Furies mate for life”_ , but I find this all a bit too contrived for me to be able to accept it. Besides, why don’t any of the other dragons seem to mate for life? Where is Stormfly’s partner? Where is Hookfang’s or Meatlug’s? It all seems like a shamelessly convenient choice made by the writers to force the Light Fury to fit within the story.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, why can’t Toothless convince the Light Fury to live with the humans? So far we’ve never seen any dragon who was unwilling to live on Berk. How convenient that the Light Furies are the first and only species who don’t accept coexistence with the humans, even after “coming around” and saving one of them.

Still, even if it all made perfect sense, I’ll admit I do not like the idea of romance being the reason Hiccup and Toothless ultimately separate. I actually thought they (platonically) loved each other, too. Does romantic love trump platonic love after all? Because this does seem to be one of the movie’s messages in the end. Anyway, this last judgement is of course a subjective one, and is thus considered in the Personal Enjoyment section of this review.

By the way, since I brought up Toothless’ flying ability: what’s up with the automatic tail? _“You tried this once before; he didn’t want it,”_ said Astrid, thus acknowledging the events of Gift of the Night Fury.

First, way to say: “Toothless was willing to sacrifice everything to stay with you, but now he’s horny/in-love, so forget all that.” How heartwarming.

Second, and most importantly: what if the tail breaks? Hiccup wondered this very question himself in this movie mere hours after Toothless left the first time with his new fireproof auto-tail. Did he never worry again? Was the break-in period calculated to be of only a couple of hours, after which the tail became indestructible?

But let’s even assume that Hiccup is so irresponsible that he somehow forgot to ever fret over it again: **how could any artifact, no matter how masterfully made, survive all those years?** In fact, how did it even resist a single year?! It was made of leather, _non_ -stainless steel, and some dragonscale-dust-and-spit-paint, and it was also comprised of plenty of complicated moving parts, some of which (I assume) must have been small. Rust, sand, salt, fire, water… oh and let’s not forget lightning! Was this a way for the story to surreptitiously bring magic or alchemy into the HTTYD world?

What I’m saying is that, just because you have dragons in a story, it doesn’t mean you can throw realism completely out the window.

 

**7 - Sudden sexual dimorphism is sudden**

After the infamous poster came out, I remember reading some of the justifications for the Light Fury’s design, and to me they all sounded like the hysterical, convoluted blabber that pours out of a PR department when it scrambles about for excuses after realizing their bosses committed some unexpected faux pas. I just don’t believe they put much thought into it. **I’m quite confident some producer simply said: “make sure kids understand it’s a pretty girl, possibly blonde,”** and they just went for it. I am, after all, a subscriber to Occam’s razor, which I’d paraphrase thusly:

_“In the absence of further proof, the correct explanation is usually the simplest one.”_

But let’s move on to the nitty gritty of the matter.

Ok, so Furies _“mate for life”_ Grimmel says. Does this mean that the Light Furies we see in the Hidden World are all widows? (Or at least most of them?) After all, the movie (contrarily to what Dean de Blois said on reddit) does seem to suggest that White Furies are the female versions of Night Furies, since, around minute 13, when we are shown Grimmel and the trappers talking about the last Night Fury, as the trappers present the caged White Fury as useful bait, Grimmel says _“a female?”_ , implying, to my ears: “a female Night Fury?” since they were talking about Night Furies.

Grimmel did not say “a White Fury?” nor did he question the sex of the dragon. **He immediately assumed it was a female, as if by the colour. In fact, even the trappers seemed to take it for granted that the Night Fury would be sexually attracted to the White Fury. So, it seems to me that, regardless of what the creators claimed on social media, the movie is still leaning towards the sexual dimorphism interpretation.**

This interpretation, however, does bring up a few questions. If there are still White Furies in the Hidden World, how did they end up there without bringing along some baby Night Fury too? Or how were they all born there without males? In other words, how come Toothless is the only male Fury around, when there are independent White Furies who haven’t been killed by Grimmel? Or does this mean that Grimmel only kills male Furies, but lets female Furies go? That would be very odd indeed, (read: “convenient for the plot”). In this interpretation, aren’t they the same dragons? Why such preference, Grimmel? (By the way: why does Grimmel like killing Night Furies in the first place? Was it ever explained?)

The most favoured objection in the fandom, of course, is that Light Furies are actually a different species (as Dean de Blois claimed on reddit), thus they don’t constitute a form of sexual dimorphism within the Night Fury species. This interpretation does not feel consistent with the conversations within the movie, nor with **the Light Fury’s blatantly feminine design** (I mean, she has pink-glitter accents and even eyeshadow! Do you think we are all idiots, Dean? Are you trying to pull a J.K. Rowling on us?), but let’s assume it’s correct; there are still questions that need answering:

Why are the two species able to breed? And is their offspring fertile, or are they like mules? Most pressingly, **why does no character wonder about this within the movie?** After all, **there are no other apparent hybrids in the world to prove that such mating habits exist, so why does every character in the movie seem to take it immediately for granted that Night Furies and White Furies are attracted to each other?** And does this mean that perhaps Night Furies are capable of breeding with other species as well? No? (Of course not, or it would have already happened.)

 **Then why the heck didn’t the writers just create an actual female Night Fury in the first place?!** **Why did they have to come up with such a idiotic contrivance, which was bound to spawn controversy and pathetic explanations by the creators on social media?!** I’ll tell you why, because of the reasons I stated before: the producers wanted to make sure children knew it was a pretty aryan girl; there is just no other conceivable reason for this obvious disaster. This doesn’t mean I’m done with my questions:

Why are _all_ the kids hybrid? Are they the first hybrids in the world? How?! Or does this confirm the sexual dimorphism interpretation, which would make all the kids hermaphrodite? _All_ of them? Or are they somehow transgender? Why do I suddenly get this nagging feeling that this was a wishy-washy way to pander to some sexual or gender minority? (I know, I’m treading on dangerous grounds.)

But maybe that’s just me seeing things, and the truth is simply that all Furies settle into a colour when they grow up in the sexual dimorphism interpretation, but I shouldn’t be having to come up with such explanations myself, as it’s the movie’s job to provide them. And still, why is this happening only for Night Furies? Was it really necessary to introduce this matter at the very end of the franchise? Was everyone drunk when they wrote this script?

 

**8 - The Noah’s ark rule and obligatory romances**

This might be more about personal taste, but I do think forced symmetry can undermine any story’s realism, and that a healthy dose of realism (and thus lack of symmetry) is always a good thing in stories which already contain unrealistic elements (in this case, dragons).

So, considering that having the main protagonist “get the girl” is already the king of all clichès, did we also need the second protagonist to “get the girl”, lest he be lonely? Have him be lonely, create some drama, make us feel sad for him. I can’t stand this forced feel-good attitude where every important character must be paired off and breeding by the end.

There’s this odd trend in certain stories, especially if they are targeted towards mainstream audiences, where it’s somehow a rule that no protagonist should ever be left partnerless. Not everyone should require a partner to have their story arc finish on a happy ending, and this should be even truer for animals (or dragons). And I’m not saying this as a bitter single guy, having been in a happily committed relationship for more years than I should probably say…

By now you must have realised I’m talking about Toothless and the Light Fury. Ever since the movie’s poster came out, the whole writing-room conversation became painfully obvious to all. Someone clearly ran out of ideas. The words “How about we find Toothless a girl?” were probably uttered, and nobody had the decency to reply: “You sure? Should we _really_ make the finale of this franchise centered on _romance_?” Very original, Dreamworks.

Alas, I would really like to say that the Light Fury was a completely unnecessary love interest, but the story was clearly forced to hinge on her triggering Toothless’ rut, so you can’t take her out without affecting the plot, even though removing her would have made the plot far better in my view. Nonetheless, did romance have to be the driving force of this last movie? Couldn’t duty? Couldn’t honour? Couldn’t just about anything else?

After all, the strongest relationship of the franchise was never the romantic one between Hiccup and Astrid, but the one between Hiccup and Toothless. Romance was never this franchise’s strong suit. In fact, I’d be willing to argue that Hiccup and Astrid’s relationship was the worst, most clichè, and most childish part of the first movie, even though I consider the first movie to be the best one of the three.

In this third movie, aside from Toothless imitating the paradise bird in his attempts to woo the Light Fury, the rest of their romance was just awfully boring and predictable. Visually stunning, sure, but boring story-wise. _Boy meets girl - > girl is unsure -> boy makes a fool of himself -> girl finds it endearing -> boy and girl get together -> girl is taken hostage -> boy is forced to follow after her -> hostage situation is resolved -> boy and girl live happily ever after and have multiple children._

For my part (assuming I accepted the separation of humans and dragons, which I don’t, as I’ll argue in section 13) I would have preferred seeing Toothless realise that he needs to leave Hiccup for the good of dragonkind, without the romantic incentive, and, even better, without Hiccup agreeing to it at first. I would have loved to see Toothless become more responsible, more admirable. Then, sure, in the final scene, I would have been ok with seeing Toothless having found a female of his own after the timeskip.

Honestly, the only new hinted couple whose romance I found interesting was that of Gobber and Eret. I don’t know why, but it just works. Young hunk plus daddy-bear getting it on with all sorts of prosthetic toys… I can just see it happen in an R rated version of the franchise.

Jokes aside, romance is rarely ( _very_ rarely) a good driving force for any story. The best stories with romances usually relegate them to b-plots, and even then, it hardly ever works.

 

**9 - A poisonous plot device**

This may seem like a small one, but once you notice it, it should bother you to no end. It bothered the hell out of me at any rate:

How does Grimmel’s poison actually work? The only answer I managed to come up with is “very conveniently”. It paralyzes dragons instantaneously when it needs to (see minute 13)  though sometimes it works a little more slowly, regardless of the dragon’s size. Also, depending on what the plot needs, it can work as a tool for taking complete control of a dragon, though somehow, the only one the controlled dragons seem to obey is Grimmel (did he infuse it with his own blood or something?). Most annoyingly, it even works on the Light Fury, who doesn’t get paralyzed by the venom, but instead just lets Grimmel ride on her back without throwing him off.

Take a moment to consider this: had this poison not existed, how much of this villain would remain? I’ll leave the answer to you, though it should become even more obvious as you read the next section.

 

**10 - Maladies of incompetence**

a) The incompetent villain syndrome

First: How did Grimmel deliver a sedated Light Fury into Berk’s forest without being noticed? Even if he flew there at night with his dragon-quadcopter, were there no dragon riders patrolling the island?

Ok, maybe he is very skilled, but then why aren’t we shown _how_ he managed such an exceptional feat? Why doesn’t the movie show off the enemy’s abilities? As far as the audience can tell, all his might resides in his special poison-crossbow, a banal plot device. We are _told_ he is the best, but we are never truly _shown_ it. I’m sure you know what they say about the relationship between good storytelling and the balance of showing and telling.

Second, and more importantly: where did he go after getting on Berk? What was his plan? What if Toothless failed to discover the glitter-fury? What if she woke up and left the island before meeting him? What if Toothless took weeks to discover her? Would Grimmel wait, camped up in Berk’s forest, twirling his evil-mustache, ready to make a cackling escape on his evil-looking quadcopter?

Also, why was Grimmel so careless as to forget retrieving one of his paralyzing bolts, only for it to be later found by Hiccup? **And what’s with the unsupervised trap?! Why did Grimmel not ambush Toothless Hiccup and Tuffnut as soon the trap failed?** He had his instant-paralysis crossbow and four dragons, he could have fought Hiccup, Tuffnut and Toothless right there and won, and the movie would have been over. Was he on a bathroom break? Did he not bring any minions along with more poison-crossbows?

 _“He lives for the hunt,”_ says Eret, _“to get inside the mind of his prey. [...] It’s all a game to him.”_

Bullshit. He’s just incompetent, because if he wasn’t, the movie would have been over by minute 23! This is the first time I felt like a How to Train Your Dragon movie was actively trying to insult the audience’s intelligence. I thought this franchise was Dreamworks’ path to a future of actually well written stories, something that could lead to a new generation of animated classics. At least, I had really hoped so. I was wrong. We are sadly back to making childish movies, instead of good movies for children.

There are further instances of such contrivances in this movie which fall under a category I call “the incompetent-villain syndrome,” a common flaw in stories where there’s a villain whose plan and thought processes are made to look smart only to the unattentive viewer, and only one way. As soon as you try to reverse-engineer the plan, it becomes blatantly clear how faulty it was, and how many coincidences had to occur for the villain to be able to claim: “That was my plan all along! Mwahaha.”

Alas, even high budget detective shows (like, say, Sherlock) suffer from this, so I guess I’ll have to give this children’s movie a pass. Yet, keep in mind the first movie did not suffer from this at all, nor did the second one, at least not to such an extent. What did I say about keeping it simple? Even a one-dimensional villain like Drago looks better than Grimmel as soon as you turn on your brain. When making art, it’s always better to look banal, than to make a fool of yourself trying to look sophisticated.

Another way to approach this is by asking the question: how did a less equipped and less threatening villain manage to do what Drago could not?  A villain who was equipped with a whole ginormous alpha that could destroy Berk by sitting on it! In other words, how was Grimmel scarier than Drago? (He really wasn’t.) Was it because Toothless could not mind-control his handful of dragons?

By the way, Grimmel did say: _“not even your precious alpha could control them.”_ Am I to assume that Toothless has this power over other dragons then? Make up your mind, movie! **Can Toothless use mind-control or not?!?!**

 

b) The incompetent hero disorder

Since I’ve talked about the villain's incompetence, let’s talk about Hiccup’s (and all of his advisors).

 **Question one:** where was Toothless when Grimmel infiltrated Hiccup’s home? And if Toothless was kept safe elsewhere, then where was every other dragon and dragon-rider on Berk? Did no other dragon on Berk smell Grimmel or his dragons? Since Grimmel’s infiltration into Hiccup’s home was actually an ambush, how could that ambush fail? Hiccup could have had a dozen dragon riders ready to chase Grimmel’s slow quadcopter as it left Berk. And Grimmel only had a handful of dragons! **Hiccup had his entire tribe at his command! How the heck did they let him escape?! How could Hiccup be so stupid?! Why did they not chase after him?! Is Grimmel’s quadcopter faster than a Night Fury?**

It seems as if, halfway through Grimmel’s escape, everyone on Berk lost their minds. By the way, how did Hiccup foresee Grimmel would arrive in his home on that exact evening? I guess he consulted an oracle when we weren’t looking.

To reiterate: this is probably one of the stupidest, most contrived double-ambushes in film history, and if you think otherwise, let me refresh for you how it basically went:

GRIMMEL: _“I infiltrated your house without anyone noticing, and I’m pouring myself a clichè drink!”_

HICCUP: _“I foresaw your appearance in my house! In fact, I was expecting you! But I’m not going to attack you first, or even restrain you, because that would be too easy, and because I’m good-guy-Hiccup!”_

GRIMMEL: _“But I foresaw your foreseeing my appearance in your house, and I also foresaw that you were not going to attack me, which is why I casually lowered my crossbow and let you hold your fire-sword two inches from my nose during our conversation!”_

HICCUP: _“I foresaw all that too, which is why Toothless was actually Fishlegs! Because I foresaw you’d use your paralyzing crossbow on him as soon as we started talking, though I took no precautions in case you, a known Night Fury killer, were not instead using a deadly bolt. By the way, I have warriors hidden in the house!”_

GRIMMEL: _“That was not Toothless?! Oh no! But I foresaw all that too! And I have my dragons ready to burn everything and pick me up to make my escape! Mwahaha!”_

HICCUP: _“Oh, ok. Bye bye! Say hi to the trappers for me!”_

_END SCENE_

 

Feel free to watch that scene again and again before trying to contest this little parody.

 **Question two:** why did they have to make Grimmel’s kidnapping about halfway through the movie a small-team stealth mission? Are there no other dragon riders among the Berkians? Could they not have taken a whole army of dragon riders to Grimmel’s place and wrecked it from above? How many dragons does Grimmel have? Five? Six? Twenty? Berk has hundreds, maybe thousands if you consider the small ones! (Just look at the scene when they all fly away from Berk.) That’s the whole point isn’t it? Their power has “put them on the map”. How about using some of that power when threatened? Why castrate your own forces, even when attempting an attack? Why do you want to fail so badly, Hiccup?

There was no precaution Grimmel could have taken against a whole army of dragon riders. Even with his trap set up, Hiccup could have sprung the trap head on like a “proper Viking” and through sheer force (and a buttload of dragonfire) managed to defeat the enemy by minute 54, about halfway through the movie. Why did he not do this? Because, of course, it would have been far too reasonable and anticlimactic, and also because they needed to find more contrived ways to make the villain look cunning and forward-thinking, when he was just as stupid himself.

And for those who’d quote Valka on me, saying: _“he has a hundred ships, maybe more, with enough cages for all of our dragons.”_ So what?! Does he have a hundred dragon riders too? Who is going to put the flying dragons in those cages? His footmen? How? With a thousand bolas and ballistae? Let’s not be ridiculous. Berk is far more powerful with all of its dragons and possible dragon riders, and downplaying that power is just a pathetic plot device.

In fact, Berk should probably be the most powerful force in the world, much like a single Daenerys Targaryen is portrayed in A Song of Ice and Fire with only three grown dragons. (Berk’s dragons may be smaller, but they are far more numerous, and much more subservient.)

This of course makes finding good villains very difficult, which is why they had to give Drago a bewilderbeast with the ability to usurp Berk’s dragon force. What does Grimmel have in his arsenal? That’s a rhetorical question. He has nothing. He and his army should be like ants before Berk’s forces, even if every last one of his soldiers was armed with that paralysing crossbow.

Alas, this is what happens when one writes a story’s edges, without having any prior idea of how to connect them. In this case, it’s far too obvious they wrote the ending first. Stories, however, cannot grow backwards. They can be _told_ backwards, but they must be allowed to grow naturally, like plants, otherwise a writer is bound to need stupidity and incompetence as a device to force the plot in the direction of that fixed ending. A writer should of course have some idea of the ending, but they must either know exactly how to get there, or they must be willing to change it if they see it does not fit the events.

I might be generalizing, as there _may_ have been instances (though I doubt it) where a backwards-written story lacked such plot holes, but, unless it had an extremely simple plot, it would clearly take a huge amount of talent and effort to square such a circle, and, clearly, the writing team of HTTYD3 did not have either the time, the will, or the talent to do it.

 

**11 - Character problems**

a) A lack of character focus

This is not exactly a flaw, per se, but in my experience it always negatively impacts any story, as it did this one. This third movie’s story, in my view, suffered from a lack of character-focus, by which I mean it focused more on the collective, rather than the personal. Not excessively, but enough that one could more easily say this is the story of a village (and of dragon-kind), rather than a story of individuals, and that’s always going to be less appealing. There were characters in it, sure, but their inner struggle was not given enough attention, nor was there much character development (almost none, actually, but more on that in the next subsection). I believe that all good stories, regardless of the size of their cast or the epicness of their scale, must never lose track even for a moment of the most intimate feelings of their protagonists. The best stories, after all, are stories of people, not stories of events.

So, to be more specific: HTTYD1 had its constant focus on Hiccup and his very personal struggles; first, to make a name for himself, then to realize who he truly was, then to accept who he was, then to finally show others who he really was. HTTYD2 was a movie about what Hiccup wanted to be (or not to be) as an adult, a movie about personal responsibility, and, at the very end, responsibility for the collective. Alas, all that was left in HTTYD3 was even more responsibility for the collective.

We now see Hiccup struggling for everyone but himself, thus his attention is solely projected outwards, which would be fine, had there been more _inner_ conflict, like, for example, him publicly loathing the idea of parting with Toothless, or him privately telling Astrid he doesn’t want to do it, maybe crying to her, or to Valka, thinking himself selfish for it, hating himself for a moment. That’s personal struggle, that’s drama, that’s what I would have liked to see: _complexity_. You can’t portray a leader’s story in times of war without some _real_ drama. It’s either going to be boring or unrealistic, or, in this case, both.

Sadly, good stories of leaders are inevitably too complex and nuanced for young kids to relate to fully. Dreamworks had no other choice given their target audience, and they wrote themselves into this corner: an adult protagonist, a leader, with hard responsibilities, personal wants and fears, and a kid audience. They were bound to dumb it down. Alas, I must still consider this a deficiency, regardless of its inevitability.

 

b) A lack of character development 

Remember the scene in the first movie where Hiccup stares at the knife in his hands, before saying _“I did this”_? I maintain there was more (and more realistic) character development in that one scene of the first movie, than in all the scenes of the third movie put together.

Just think about it. Was there anything that came even close to that scene in terms of inner conflict in this third movie? (Or even the second one.) Was there anything like that split second where Stoick loses his balance after storming out of the great hall, having just said: _“You are not a Viking! You are not my son.”_? It was nuanced and detailed moments like those that made the first movie so great, so realistic, so much more poignant and impactful. In my view, such dramatic details were much diminished in the second movie, and almost entirely absent from the third one.

One may argue that Hiccup realizing that dragons and humans must separate (or that he and Toothless must separate) could be the big change in Hiccup’s world view. However, as I’m going to argue in detail in section 13, it was such a sudden and unjustified epiphany that, for my part, all I could do was raise my eyebrows with befuddlement at the absurdity of it. Not only that, but the lacking and lackluster display of inner struggle at this life-changing decision made everything even more unbelievable. Did nobody get this feeling that something was… well, “wrong”?

I’m of course referring to a feeling for which I don’t really have a name, but which fanfiction readers must be quite familiar with: the feeling of seeing a character behave in ways that make no sense in context. The feeling one has when they know they are witnessing a character behave in a way that solely serves the plot. In other words, the feeling of witnessing an unrealistic development, for which there was no proper setup. Alas, **making a character behave in ways that don’t fit the character in their current setup does not by itself constitute character development.**

What could have made me buy Hiccup’s change of mind, you ask? Well, for one example, if the idea to split up wasn’t Hiccup’s. Why not, for instance, give Astrid some agency? She’s merely support and decoration in this movie. Why does she only act as Hiccup’s crutch? Is she only good for pep-talks? Does she not want to make active changes to the world too? Did she drop her personality during the “romantic flight” after all? She used to be such an admirable character in the first half of the first movie.

So, why not have Hiccup and Astrid fight over this? Why not have the village support Astrid against Hiccup? **Huge decisions over the world order like the one at the center of this movie demand more conflict.** I would have bought the developments much more if I had seen Hiccup and Astrid’s relationship torn apart, only to be patched up at the end after some major loss, maybe Valka being killed, or Stormfly, or Snotlout (or all three of them). **To have had any chances of me buying the decisions made in this movie, I should have been shown the process by which Hiccup decides that dragons and humans must be separated, and that process should have been portrayed as atrociously painful, because that’s the only thing such a process could be in real life.**

Alas, in the end I saw no proper character development worthy of the name in this movie, and the only one who came close to having some was Hiccup. The rest of the characters (even the dragons) were ludicrously passive during the whole thing, which brings me to my next point:

 

c) A lack of character in general

This is, again, not always an issue, depending on how a story is developed, but it is usually a trait of bad storytelling: the characters in this movie were almost always _reactive_ , rather than _proactive_. Every major decision of the human protagonists was a reaction to something external. With the exception of the ill-planned, ill-timed, and ill-implemented attempt at kidnapping Grimmel, what other plan was not something akin to a retreat?

The first movie was about doing things, making mistakes, and finding ways to fix them. In the second one it was again about trying new things, making mistakes, and this time paying the price (Stoick’s death), but still getting up afterwards to fight once again like “proper Vikings” (more on “proper Vikings” later).

In this third movie, however, it’s all about reacting to things, retreating, fleeing, hiding. Not only is this more boring, but it’s also very disappointing. The emotions of the final separation, aside from showing how shamelessly manipulative the writers wanted to be with this movie, were also not powerful enough to distract me from the fact that this whole movie was about a massive defeat of everything the first two movies stood for. A defeat of freedom, both literally (for the dragons), and metaphorically (the freedom to choose one’s destiny without coercion). Did it not leave a bad taste in your mouths? Because it did in mine. But I have much, _much_ more to say about this topic in section 13.

Lastly, about the characters, remember when there were side-characters who had personal wants and needs? Yes, again, I’m talking about the previous movies. Stoick, Astrid, Snotlout, Fishlegs, even Eret… they all had personal goals, fears, and wants. Now? Now all they want is to pat Hiccup’s back, and stand in the blurred background of his scenes like a court attending to their king. Just look for it, count the scenes where the rest of the cast is mere background to Hiccup. They’ve all been flattened there. Occasionally there’s Astrid or Valka or Tuffnut stepping into the foreground, then retreating quickly into the bokeh.

 

**12 - Back and forth, here and there, now and then**

Now this may be just an impression of mine, but, despite this being the longest movie of the franchise, it felt like less had happened in comparison to the other two, or, more accurately, it all felt less memorable, which made the movie feel much longer than it probably was, throwing off the pacing.

This might be because of all the back and forth, all that moving around with little to no consequences. At first, we have that dragon rescue mission, where nothing impactful happens, at least with regard to the plot. The scene acts as mere introduction, which is fine, though sequels shouldn’t really waste much time on introductions, especially if the timeskip is so short, as it was in this movie.

Then, the Berkians move to a different island, only to settle there like nothing has changed. After that, there’s a failed kidnapping mission in the middle, the only consequence of which is leaving Ruffnut behind, which is stupid beyond belief. Then there is a short visit to the Hidden World, the only result of which (bringing Toothless back) creates the conditions for Grimmel to have the upper hand in the final battle.

Had everyone just stayed put and fought, nothing in this movie would have happened, and Grimmel would have easily been defeated in battle by a horde of angry dragons and dragon riders. So, ultimately, all this moving around was pointless at best, and downright detrimental at worst. It was only there to create the conditions for the protagonists to be at a disadvantage, without achieving anything else. This whole movie is just one bad decision after another, and nothing good ever comes of them.

I also feel slightly confused with regard to the timeframe of the movie. How long would you say the events portrayed in the movie took? I know this sort of information is not always important, but in the case of long chases like the one at the center of this movie, it should really be a bit clearer, if nothing else, at least for keeping up the tension.

My overall feeling, based on the scarcity of memorable events, was that the movie took place within the span of a couple of weeks at the most, yet there are details that seem to contradict that view, suggesting months. For instance, how long did building the autotail take? How long did setting up a forge take? How many days did they spend on that new island before the end of the movie? Just before the final battle, we get a glimpse of a couple of nearly finished houses on that new island. Could it really have all happened in a couple of weeks?

It is not a sign of good movie-making when the viewer can’t tell where things are in relation to each other, or how much time has passed from one event to the other, or, at the very least, from beginning to end.

 

**13 - There were dragons when I was a boy... and there still are; we just segregated them**

a) A pointless divorce

Now to the core of my review, and to what will likely be the most controversial matter: Why is the complete separation of dragons and humans the solution?

First, let’s say that I could conceivably accept the idea of redirecting all newfound dragons to the Hidden World (I don’t, but for the sake of argument let’s assume I would): **why must _all_ the dragons leave their riders?** Is it just so they can breed and have families? Is that really so important to _all_ of them? I know it would be incredibly cruel to prevent them from having mates or sexual partners, (I am by the way very much opposed to the castration of pets, as I do believe that all forms of sexual repression are abominable, so I would not consider castrating dragons a solution) but **what if some dragons want to stay with the humans, even at the cost of celibacy?**

And what if they want to go back and forth? What’s with the (semi-)voluntary segregation? They can fly, can’t they? And what about the humans? Hiccup may have a chief’s responsibilities, and Toothless may have an alpha’s responsibilities and whatnot, but, in my estimation, there should still be characters who would be willing to leave everyone and everything in order to remain with their dragons. Would no dragon be willing to do the same for their rider? Or is sticking with the alpha compulsory? (Because in that case, I can’t say I would much approve of that dragon-dictatorship, for it would pretty much make Toothless a villain. Actually, not a bad idea for a fanfic…)

Now, for a closer inspection of the plan. **Plan A: dragons and Berkians go to hide in the Hidden World together.** (It’s a miracle that the village seems to ultimately accept that plan, but more on that later.) However, Valka points out, rightly in my view, that _“greedy humans always find a way.”_ Very true, Valka dear, very true. So hiding is not the solution. Right?

However, a couple of scenes later, plan A changes to **plan B: now _only_ the dragons hide in the Hidden World.** This is portrayed as the hard, selfless, but sensible decision (and this movie’s only source of drama). **But isn’t Valka’s objection just as relevant as before?!**

How is plan B better than plan A? **How exactly is the separation of dragons and Berkians going to protect the dragons from the _“greedy humans who ALWAYS find a way”_?!** Even if Hiccup and Astrid are the only ones that know the exact location of the place (and they can’t be, since we are told other sailors already happened upon the place), how will even approximate information about the Hidden World be kept from leaking to the trappers? What if trappers target Berk for that information? **How is Berk less of a target than before?! If anything, Berk is more of a target now that it’s weaker! How can Berk be sure trappers won’t start looking more and more for the Hidden World now that its existence is confirmed?** With this one line from Valka the writers managed to create a gaping contradiction, and the worst part is that this one line makes more sense than anything else in the movie! That’s what you get when the core idea behind your movie is a total asspull.

Furthermore, if we disregard Valka’s comment, why can’t plan A work? Why can’t humans go to live in the Hidden World? I’m not recommending it, and I think it’s defeatist of the Vikings to even accept such a fate, but still, why shouldn’t the local dragons accept that coexistence, especially once Toothless becomes king? So far, thousands of dragons seemed very eager to live with the humans. Why should the Hidden World’s dragons be any different? Is maybe because… plot? Thought we wouldn’t notice, Dreamworks?

 

b) No more dragons?

By the way, how is Hiccup planning to help the other dragons currently around the world without using dragons himself? Aren’t there other trappers around anymore? What about the dragons, free or otherwise, who live far away and who haven’t yet reached or who don’t know about the Hidden World? So many unanswered and unanswerable questions keep piling up when your core idea is so inane.

 

c) Not even a civil war

I get the value of the emotional ending (if it wasn’t for that, this movie would have no emotion whatsoever) but the moment you investigate, you can see not only how flimsy its foundation is, but also how bad its execution. There wasn’t even a discussion, a debate, an argument! No one fought to keep their dragon with them, and no dragon refused to leave their rider, even for moment. They all barely hesitated.

A thirty second scene with Fishlegs saying “no! You won’t take her from me! I won’t let her go!” or something along those lines, as he points an unsheathed sword at his friends, defending Meatlug and protecting the newborn with his arms, unwilling to let go, would have made everything more believable, even if he were to relent after those thirty seconds, distraught.

I know you want to say that taboo phrase now: “it’s just a kids’ movie”. Well, even assuming this was a legitimate argument, I maintain the way this matter was handled was just insulting, even to a kid’s emotional intelligence.

Actually, forget Fishlegs; what about Valka? She lived twenty years with Cloudjumper! Would she really be like: “Ok, our job is done now. Have fun living burrowed under the earth and never flying above the clouds again, _Cloudjumper_. Cheerio.”

I don’t buy it. I’ve known people who would easily kill for the sake of their pets (I’m not one of them, but I can confirm they exist). Don’t tell me Hiccup’s decision was never going to start a civil war, because, by all accounts, it should have, among humans and dragons alike. (Now that I think about it, this seems like a very nice idea for a fanfic. If anyone cares to write it, do send me a link to it.)

 

d) The movie’s despicable message

And since I brought up the complete segregation (and I’m using the word willfully, with all its unsavory connotations) of dragons from the skies, let’s talk about the message of the movie, which is by far its greatest failing.

So, Hiccup claims the world does not _“deserve”_ the dragons (whatever that means), so they better remain burrowed, quarantined, forbidden from soaring in the skies for generations, for their own sake. Is this really the message? Because that seems to be the movie’s main takeaway.

I don’t care how sparkly or big your Hidden World is, it’s still essentially an open-door concentration camp. There may be nothing barring you exit, but you still can’t get out, because your society has decided so for you.

Thus, to me, the underlying meaning of this movie can only be interpreted as something absolutely hideous. As I mentioned before, **has nobody realised that this franchise ended with the utter defeat of the concept of freedom and individuality?** Is nobody seeing what I’m seeing? Am I the crazy one?

_And thus the dragons, the most majestic creatures that ever lived, could no longer soar into the skies, or see the light of day, but from a hole at the bottom of the ocean. The End._

Should I be clapping? Because there is nothing admirable in what I see. **What I see is that both Vikings and dragons in this movie, instead of improving the world, instead of fighting, instead of understanding that life is a constant ( _constant!_ ) struggle (an _“occupational hazard”_ , if you will), and that one must work hard every day and fight and take every gain and loss, and live through it without losing heart, here they basically tell us: time to give up.**

The Vikings, of course, are by far the worst offenders: _“Our world doesn’t deserve you,”_ says Hiccup in one of the final scenes, adding _“yet”_. So, what Hiccup is saying is that the world is not ready for coexistence with the dragons. The solution? Let’s inflict on ourselves immeasurable emotional pain and loneliness, so we at least don’t have to deal with this problem right now. Let’s leave this to the future generations to fix (i.e.: when the world becomes “ready”). Let’s all metaphorically and literally stick our heads under a rock. Great lesson, Dreamworks.

You can spin it any way you want, as I’ve seen many in the fandom try (rather hysterically in some cases). You can say it was the best possible decision from the few available. You can say it was a selfless act (was it really?). You can say it was a pacifist’s decision (not necessarily a good thing). **It is still the most cynic, defeatist, pessimistic ending to an animated movie I’ve ever seen, and I resent everything about it, and if you care at all about a movie’s moral message, so should you.**

By the way, what does the world being “not ready” mean? If the world is “not ready” for, say, a certain minority (dragons, in this case), **it should be the duty of everyone involved** **to fight for that minority’s rights so as to be accepted today, not segregate that minority to some hidden world and wait for the day that the rest of the world becomes ready on its own.** I’m sure you see where I’m going with this. **The world doesn’t ever become “ready” on its own, unless principled people fight to change it, sometimes paying for it with their lives. Those people, we call heroes.**

That’s why some of the most renowned heroes in human history are those that fought and sacrificed everything for their freedom or the freedom of others. That’s why we remember some of them as great emancipators. And **Hiccup was indeed an amazing emancipator in the first movie** , freeing, with Toothless’ help, both the dragons from their bondage, and the humans from a pointless war, and losing a leg in the process.

Alas, **I see no heroes in HTTYD3**. I only see a spineless, defeated village that finally bows down to the circumstances, and dragons that seem to have no free will of their own and who seem perfectly fine with never seeing the sky again for generations, if ever. **The Vikings of Berk, through their cowardice, are accomplices to the segregation of dragon-kind** , and what’s even more disturbing, is that the dragons accepted that condition, some even with apparent glee, which is creepy to no end, much like seeing a tortured man laugh.

There’s a beautiful piece of poetry in my country of origin that was written under Turkish occupation, and which is still sung to this day after more than two hundred years, the most famous line of which, badly translated, says:

_It’s better to have a single hour to live in freedom, than forty years in bondage and captivity._

I may not have lived under the oppression of the Turkish empire myself, yet I can’t help admiring that message with every fiber of my body, **and** **thus I find the offer, even the mere suggestion of a positive ending that involves the furthering of any population’s degree of unfreedom to be contradictory and despicable**.

So, I maintain there is no positive message of any kind at the end of HTTYD3. In fact, this movie did not have a bittersweet ending at all, as some may wish to believe, for there was nothing sweet about it. **This was a bitter tragedy, which I may not have minded** (I _love_ tragedies), **had it only been treated as such**! There is no sugarcoating it. The villain won. He got rid of all the dragons. There is nothing to smile fondly about at the end. **And yet, precisely because it’s a childish movie, rather than a good movie for children, there is a glaring incongruity between what is actually going on, and how we are told to feel. The whole ending is drowning in complete and utter narrative and emotional dissonance.**

 **For anything to make emotional and moral sense in this movie, the final scene should have been one with all the Vikings on their knees, hiding their faces and weeping in shame for what they allowed.** (No, I don’t think I’m exaggerating in the least.)

 

e) _Where are my Vikings?!_

And since I brought up Berk’s Vikings as well… where have they gone?! What happened to the tough people of Berk? A couple of years without war and they turned into a bunch of feckless cowards?

These questions, by the way, also argue against the Vikings’ decision to abandon Berk, which would have never even crossed the minds of the Vikings in the first movie.

 _“The more dragons we bring back here, the bigger of a target we become,”_ says Astrid. Perhaps. But what makes you think your enemies will stop pursuing you if you leave? (I’m asking Hiccup now, as it was his idea.) How about destroying the current wave of enemies before leaving to at least have the chance that nobody will know where you’ve disappeared? And what’s the plan after you find the Hidden World? You’d be cutting social and economic ties with the rest of the world only to ensure generations of inbreeding in some hidden land. Is Hiccup the most incompetent chief ever, or what?

And besides, didn’t Hiccup actually say that Vikings have _“stubbornness issues”_ , which was why they hadn’t left the island despite seven generations of dragon attacks? Are they willing to leave now because they’ve been put on the map, so to speak? Where is their pride? Even assuming they all agreed that they had to hide the dragons from the world, how did nobody say they were willing to stay back in their ancestral home, even if dragonless? Does Hiccup somehow have the whole of Berk’s population under some spell?

**Most importantly, what ever happened to: _“We are Vikings; it’s an occupational hazard”_?!?! Remember when Hiccup said those fantastic words back to his father in the first movie, before facing the queen on his own? That was true heroism, and it was the moment Hiccup proved that, deep down, in his own way, he was “one of them” after all, a _real_ Viking. It was one of the most noble, admirable, dignified lines of the first movie, and now its being callously stepped on.**

**Clearly, when Stoick died, he took all the courage and moral fortitude of the world to his grave, leaving behind only pathetic, unprincipled, deplorable, spineless humanoids.**

 

f) A Brave New Hidden World

“Oh but Vikings must do this for the dragons’ sake! They really care about the dragons’ safety!” you may object.

Well, while I think it’s rather condescending of the Vikings to be deciding the dragons’ fate all by themselves, let’s decide one thing first: are dragons cattle, or are dragons allies? Because if they are the former, then why would the Berkians care to protect them to that extent? Would they be doing the same for their sheep? Why don’t most of them agree to let them go from the start? (Gobber seemed particularly eager for this course of action, actually.)

If instead dragons are more than mere cattle or pets (and I maintain they are more than that), don’t they somehow get to decide for themselves? After all, would they be fighting alongside the humans if they cared more about their own lives? Or are they _all_ so strongly bound to the alpha (who is bound to Hiccup) that they can’t leave on their own even if they wanted to? And again, was there really no dragon willing to stay behind with the humans? Did Toothless force them with his alpha magic when we weren’t looking?

To bring back the topic of the dragons’ will: **do the dragons have no agency at all?**

First of all, **don’t tell me this movie did not really end with a form of segregation because the dragons burrowed themselves willingly**. Did they really? All of them? How did they even agree so unanimously, if not by some form of coercion? Are they a hive-mind?

I thought the first movie proved that the hive-society of dragons was part of the problem, a problem Hiccup and Toothless solved by killing the queen and _freeing_ the dragons. Now, in the end, it appears we are back to a hive society. The king may be prettier and less dogmatic this time, and the prison may look like a flashy Bangkok stripclub with all-you-can-take Ecstasy, but the result seems the same to me: a dystopian dragon-society.

In fact, somewhere between the lines I smell a parallel of the evolution between the two most famous dystopias of the 20th century: from Orwell’s “1984” with the dictatorial queen of the first movie, to Huxley’s “Brave New World” with the handsome Toothless and the sparkly Hidden World where everyone is mindlessly satisfied without even being aware of their unfreedom.

Am I overreaching here? Maybe a little. But for those who know what I’m talking about, now that I made you think about it, I bet you can’t unthink it, and that’s enough for me.

 **In any case, the result for the dragons in this third movie is yet another hive society of mindless serfs with no individuality**. Do dragons, the culturally universal symbol of power, freedom, and independence, never care about freedom after all? If so, I can’t say I like it, but I would be willing to accept it, had it only been decided more clearly by the writers that this is what they were going for. What I’m complaining about here is the writers’ cowardice regarding the subject.

Ever since the second movie, I started feeling as if the writers were pointedly avoiding this particular matter so they could have it both ways, depending on what was convenient. More specifically, I often found myself wondering: How much do dragons understand? How _does_ their society work? Are there many racial sub-societies? Are there no conflicts among dragons? How much do humans understand about them? And are they all the same mentally across different races?

Toothless laughs, pouts, cries, understands nuanced situations, and obeys complex commands, so he’s clearly far smarter than any chimp. I know these are particularly complicated matters, especially for a kid’s movie, but to me it’s a big problem nonetheless, a problem from which, once again, the first movie does not suffer (or at least not nearly as much as the last two movies).

Sadly, this is often a problem with sequels: they fail to address the circumstances that the first movie has created, often opting for some underhanded reset of the situation, hoping we won’t notice.

 

g) Wrapping up

Having said all this, I feel confident in my absolute refusal to accept the permanent divorce between dragons and humans as a sensible, moral, and, most gravely, a coherent direction for the plot to take. **I submit to you: the whole finale to this beloved franchise of mine is _,_ in and of itself, a plot-hole as big as the entrance to the place from which this third instalment takes its subtitle.**

 

**14 - Cheap closure is worse than none at all**

So… that final scene. What a disaster. Did they really have to add it in? Couldn’t they end it on the wedding? Everything about that scene raises more questions than it answers, and that’s not a good thing for the final scene of a whole franchise to do. Some of those questions, I already addressed in the previous sections, but there are others.

First, why were Toothless and the Light Fury waiting outside the Hidden World? Did they have an appointment with Hiccup and Astrid? And why were there no other dragons beside their children? Why is nobody protecting the King? Also, aren’t _all_ dragons supposed to stay in the Hidden World to, you know... _hide?_ Were they just waiting outside because otherwise Hiccup and Astrid would have found no way to get in? This last one is a rhetorical question.

It’s painfully obvious that the whole scene is set up for the sake of a direct reunion, and it inevitably ends up feeling contrived. Not to mention unnecessary, especially if you consider the following questions:

Why did Hiccup wait so long to go? And did nobody else want to see their dragons? What about Fishlegs? Or Valka? Also, how could the village allow the chief, chieftess, and all the heirs to leave on a boat into uncharted seas, without an escort? Are they all insane?

By the way, I’m not going to comment on the fact that Toothless forgot Hiccup. I’ll just pretend it never happened, and I’ll pretend even harder that Dean deBlois never confirmed that that’s what really happened. The whole notion is such an insult to the fans that I feel merely addressing it would lower me as a person. For the sake of the creators of the first movie, I’ll pretend this last scene didn’t just ruin the whole franchise for me.

 

**15 - Minor qualms (some of these may count as nitpicking)**

a) The impossible world

Ok I know artistic licenses are a thing, and I can accept that, but this does bother me a little so I’ll mention it as a minor qualm: the Hidden World is a geologically impossible structure. There, I said it. There’s no way such a gigantic _empty_ hole in the ocean could exist. It would have either filled up in a couple of weeks at the most, lowering the sea levels around the world permanently, or, assuming the hole’s mouth is somehow at sea-level, then it would have only lasted maybe a couple of centuries, before collapsing under the erosion and tectonic movements.

Besides, there is no geological phenomenon that could have created a void hole of that size and shape underneath the ocean in the first place. It could only have appeared if a god had willed it into existence, and even then it would not have lasted for long. Therefore, it appears this Hidden World is just an asspull in more ways than one.

Oh, and by the way, how do the tens of thousands of dragons of the hidden world find fresh water? They can’t quench their thirst by simply licking dew off fluorescent plants and rocks, and the rainwater passing through the hole could never be enough. Besides, the seawater falling within would salt everything. It’s not like in normal caves where fresh water permeates through the limestone when it rains, since the whole structure here is already under salty water, which clearly does not permeate (otherwise the hidden world would have already filled up).

It really isn’t a good place for large dragons to live. Or was it ever established that dragons can drink seawater? If it was, I missed it. And even if it was, should I start asking what those dragons are going to eat in that cave too? I think my point is already made without me needing to open that can of worms as well.

 

b) The impossible sword

This one is probably a gripe that’s unique to me, but still, I have to say it: Hiccup’s retractable fire-sword is stupid. I wish he got rid of it after the second movie, but alas he still has it in this one.

First, fire on a sword is useless (unless your target is wearing armour made of hay for some reason). It only makes the sword easier to track, and if you think it makes the sword any sharper, you are sorely mistaken (unless, again, your enemy is made of butter). Besides, what use is a sword that lights up when you are on a stealth mission aboard enemy ships?

Second, and most importantly, how did such a flimsy sword not break at the first parry? For a franchise that seemed to pride itself in having a tinkerer/engineer kind of protagonist, they really did very little research on actual weaponsmithing. There is no metal currently in our modern industry that could make a retractable sword last more than a couple of hits against a real sword before its components unhinged. Metal is hard to break, but moving parts are a huge point of failure, that’s why there are hardly any retractable weapons in history.

By the way, I’m still not convinced the tailfin is a realistic contraption (and the autotail even more so), but I’m willing to suspend disbelief in that case because the entire franchise is hinged on it. The retractable firesword however was completely unnecessary, and I would have been much happier had they dispensed with it altogether. It’s easier to suspend disbelief when it’s not required of you at every twist and turn.

 

c) The impossible wingsuit

In every instance in this movie where wingsuits are involved, they are always portrayed as working in ways that defy physics. Not just a little bit (which may be acceptable) but by a lot. While the second movie utilised Hiccup’s wingsuit in slightly more realistic ways, in this movie it seems almost equivalent to flying. Landing with even the most modern wingsuits actually requires parachutes (or at the very least a huge landing strip of thick fluffy stuff) yet Hiccup lands on his feet! (minute 53). I don’t recall the first two movies having contempt for physics to such an extent.

 

d) Convenient timing

How probable was it for Hiccup to find the Hidden World just in time to see Toothless’ inauguration into kinghood? But 100% of course. Why? Does it seem unlikely to you? (Do I really need to point out the sarcasm in this? I hope not.)

 

e) Grimmel’s knowledge of the Night Furies

Berk’s dragon manual had a void entry about Night Furies, yet Grimmel supposedly knew everything there was to know about them. This asymmetric distribution of information is actually quite disgruntling. Where did Grimmel get his information? Most importantly, when? How old is he? Hiccup spent 5 years flying around, mapping new places and he met no Night Furies, so when exactly was Grimmel done killing “all” the Night Furies? How long did it take him? And how can he be sure? Did he scan the entire world? With our modern technologies we still have no way to count the exact number of the planet’s elephants, arguably the least elusive animals that currently walk the Earth. On what grounds was Grimmel so confident about Night Furies?!

On a similar note, Grimmel said “Night Furies mate for life”. How does he know that? Did he study their behaviours for years before going on a killing spree? Did he spy on the most elusive and rare dragons in the world? How? He must be unfathomably skilled. If that’s the case, he should have been the protagonist of this movie. He would have certainly been more interesting than our current protagonist.

 

f) Grimmel’s ships have super speed

How did Grimmel’s whole fleet manage to chase Ruffnut to Hiccup’s current island in what seemed to be mere hours? The question is rhetorical, for the answer is, quite obviously, “movie magic”. I know such things are only too common in movies, but still, they are mistakes, and pointing them out helps me cope with the frustration that noticing them inevitably fuels.

 

g) From Ferrari to quirky convertible

I’m aware of the studio’s target audience, but still, did they have to make Toothless so goofy? Remember the first movie? (Yes, I’m bringing it up a lot.) Remember his character? There was a regality to the “Ferrari of dragons” (as the creators described him in some interview). There was a feral, draconic pride to him, especially at first, which made his cat-like chasing of the reflection, or his enjoyment of Hiccup’s scratches truly funny _because_ of that very contrast.

After HTTYD2, however, Toothless became a total goofball, and the flirting scene in HTTYD3, while cute and funny out of context, only made me cringe-smile. There is nothing imposing about him anymore, nothing scary. From elegant, feral panther, he turned into a goofy puppy. It’s not inconceivable that his character loosened up with the time skip, but to me it just feels like he’s no longer the “Ferrari of dragons”; now he’s more like a cheap, quirky convertible, with electric-blue neon underglow (finglow?) to make it look “cool”. What a downgrade. I wish they had made his character changes more subtle at least.

I actually suspect I know why they took that direction with his personality. I’m merely speculating, of course, but I think it was only _after_ the first movie that the producers truly realised what great merchandise or sponsoring medium Toothless could be. They might have seen it sooner, but in the first movie Toothless didn’t look as much like a ploy to sell merch, or to make ads that would grab a kid’s attention. He was his own character. Starting from HTTYD2, he felt more and more like a “porg” or a “minion”. A goofy, fun, animal-character that would make everyone go “ _aww, look at that big scaly puppy”_ , and which would convince kids to make their parents spend more on the franchise _._

I must confess that if such a decision was made willingly, I deeply resent it, for I much preferred looking at Toothless, thinking “how magnificent”, much like one would when seeing a black panther, or, indeed, a Ferrari.

 

h) How did Valka win over Spitelout at arm wrestling?

I know that of women’s empowerment to be a very important message, but, as with everything, it can be overdone. There is no way Valka’s skinny arm could beat Spitelout’s in the unnecessary glimpse of the two arm wrestling in the great hall around minute 8 of the movie. Why was such a thing shown then? Does Valka also need to be physically strong to be a good character? Can’t her strengths, like Hiccup’s, lie somewhere else? Those three whole seconds of the movie made me roll my eyes so hard, I couldn’t hear anything else for the next minute.

 

i) An unlikely reluctance to marriage

Why is Hiccup so reluctant to marry Astrid? Of course, had this movie been truly set in Viking times they would have been practically forced to marry at the end of the first movie, so let’s accept a more modern interpretation of romantic relationships. Even so, in similarly small villages, even in relatively modern times, it’s not considered particularly premature to marry at the current age of the protagonists. So why such reluctance? It does not seem in character to me at all.

Besides, what would change in their relationship if they married? They look married already, not to mention the fact that the whole village has treated them as a couple for more than five years. Why does Hiccup seem so tense? In context, it makes zero sense. In fact, they should have probably married at the end of the second movie. Besides, assuming they started having sex at, say, sixteen years old (which still seems very late in context), unless Astrid is barren or Hiccup is impotent (or any variation of the two), they should probably have a couple of kids already.

I can still speculate on why they distorted Hiccup’s and, actually, even Astrid’s characters in this regard. In my view, they wanted their wedding to be the ending scene of this franchise. Clearly, they managed it, but, at the expense of character consistency. Once again, it shows how much the writers were focused on making things fit with their preconceived ending, rather than on the proper development of the characters. What a shame.

 

j) Poor worldbuilding

How come everyone knows about Berk in this world? How come the people of Berk, a place so remote that is _“twelve days north of hopeless”_ and which _“is located solidly on the meridian of misery”,_ are known to so many strangers? How come Stoick the Vast’s name is so well known to every trapper we are introduced to, including Grimmel? How can that be the case, when everyone on Berk seems to know nothing about the outside world?

This was actually a problem that started with the second movie. How come Stoick knew of Drago, whilst everyone on Berk was seemingly in the dark about him? Why would Stoick wait until the second movie to tell Hiccup the story of that famous meeting when Drago burnt everything?

Coming back to the third movie, how come Eret knows about Grimmel’s paralyzing bolts? How come Grimmel knows about Drago? How come everyone knows about everyone else, with the exception of Hiccup and the gang? It should not be possible, yet both in the second and third movie, Hiccup is portrayed as completely oblivious to the world, because the writers know the audience is oblivious as well. This asymmetry in information is completely unrealistic, and the fact that it’s solely made for the audience’s sake is obvious, which makes suspension of disbelief very difficult.

On a relatively tangential matter: Where are the other villages? Did the villages led by all those chiefs we saw in that flashback of the second movie not befriend their own dragons? Did Berk remain in complete isolation, despite its new ability to fly? Does Berk have no allies? Did none of the lands Hiccup was charting contain any humans or known villages? Did Hiccup, son of the apparently very famous Stoick the Vast, never meet anyone beyond Berk during his travels? Why does it feel like those villages never actually existed? It’s as if the entire world is solely populated by Berk and the trappers.

I’m of course ignoring the TV show, as it’s not canon.

 

k) A distinct lack of grit

This is probably a more personal gripe I have with this movie, but I also think it constitutes a deficiency when one compares this to the first two movies.

Both of the first two movies provided something that felt both shocking and groundbreaking (for a kids’ movie at any rate), whilst always remaining coherent and realistic. It was those details that sealed the deal for me. In the first movie, it was the loss of hiccup’s leg; in the second it was Stoick’s death. You may say that in this third movie the “big deal” was the separation of humans and dragons, but as we are shown at the end it’s not truly a permanent thing (or at least there’s no real need for it to be), not to mention the fact that we were given plenty of foreshadowing for it. In fact, we have that expectation beaten into our heads since the very start of the movie.

What I’m saying is that there is a distinct lack of grit in this last movie, a lack of _truly and inevitably_ permanent consequences for the characters’ actions. Nobody so much as broke a nail during the whole ordeal.

 

**16 - Some positive things**

When the core of a story is so rotten, it’s hard to find positive things to say. Still, while definitely overshadowed by the negatives, there were indeed a couple of moments I enjoyed in this movie’s script as well, and it would seem unfair not to point them out at least. In sparse order:

The moment where everyone is pretending not to look at Hiccup after Toothless has left with his auto-tail (minute 47) was nice and subtle. It was all very well timed and choreographed. A simple scene (for once in this movie!) without music, but dense with meaning. I only wish there had been more such scenes in the movie.

Hiccup’s facial expressions after seeing Toothless being king of the Hidden World (1:06) are very meaningful, and wonderfully animated (though this last assessment goes into the Visuals rating).

Hiccup telling the Light Fury to _“save him”_ before letting himself slip into the void (1:22) is handled flawlessly.

The part when one of Hiccup’s wings is torn off his flight suit was visceral and wonderfully symbolic. I’m not a fan of slow motion, but still, a very nice moment.

For all the scenes I described above, unfortunately, the foundations were always rotten. If only everything that led up to those moments (and everything occurring later) made any sense, then the beautiful moments I just described would have had some chance at redeeming this movie. Alas, as they stand, they do not.

 

**17 - Conclusion and Story rating**

So, after this tour d’horizon of the massive problems (and moral insults) in the plot and characters of this movie, I feel safe in my estimation that story-wise this movie is an unmitigated disaster. I’m not going to say that I put more effort into writing this review than they did scripting the movie, because it’s probably not true. They probably tried hard, but wrote themselves into some inescapable corners, which produced innumerable plot holes, some avoidable, others less so.

In my view, they should have written everything from scratch, without trying to reverse-engineer a movie from the sentence “there were dragons when I was a boy”. As I said before, stories must grow freely from an initial idea, and must do so from beginning to end, not the other way around. You must be an extremely talented writer to grow a consistent story backwards, _especially_ if you are trying to splice it with a prequel, and Dreamworks clearly lacked such ability.

In any case, ratings of art should not take into account the circumstances and effort of production, but only the final product, for art is supposedly immortal, and thus, the moment it is created, it should be able to transcend history and context as much as possible. Wanting to believe that they didn’t truly intend to convey this movie’s ultimate message as I interpreted it, my respect for the creators, and for Dean de Blois in particular, is still high, and my gratitude to him and his crew is still considerable, but my rating for this section will still have to be a **2/10** , which translates to a **0.6/3.**


	5. ASPECT 2 of 4: MUSIC and SOUND

_Punctured bagpipes, deflated personality_

 

When the first movie came out, I rushed to buy the soundtrack. I was completely blown away. There were northern vibes everywhere, and a new-age Vikingness all its own. It was not just background accompaniment cooked up by some studio to fill the void and keep the viewers’ attention.

First of all, silence was utilised surprisingly well. Then, of course, the tracks were also exceptionally well composed. “Forbidden Friendship” was subtle and exquisite. “Coming Back Around” was inspirational, a track that can still move me to joyful tears with its five-note-theme. And I will never trust anyone who doesn’t automatically weep at the same five notes played slowly on the piano in “Where’s Hiccup” as he finds out his leg is missing, or whose skin doesn’t prickle even a little bit at the first couple of seconds of “New Tail”, or whose feet don’t start dancing a merry jig at “See You Tomorrow”, or whose heart doesn’t skip when the war bagpipes wail at the end of “The Downed Dragon” as we stare into Toothless’ green angry eye...

You get my point. In my view, the soundtrack of the first HTTYD movie is one of the ten best soundtracks in all of film history (or at least out of the thousand-something movies I’ve seen), and I hold this opinion very strongly.

So, after buying the soundtrack what did I do? As I usually do in similar situations I went to listen to everything else John Powell composed. If I loved one of his creations to death, then there must be something else in his repertoire I could enjoy, I thought. So it was to my utter astonishment that I discovered it was all bland cookie-cutter crap. _Everything_. And he is an absurdly prolific composer! What happened? Was it a fluke?

At first I told myself: he was probably never given enough creative freedom, or at least his age and vast experience are finally paying off; everything he’ll compose from now on will be worth an Oscar (a worthless trophy in my view, but you get what I mean). Alas, that has not been the case, and worse still, the tracks he composed for both sequels of the same franchise have been comparatively underwhelming, though the second one does still have some amazing moments, especially those with vocals, like “Flying with mother”, which was magnificently heartwarming. Or do you remember the army of distant bagpipes in “Hiccup Confronts Drago”? What a way to make a villain feel exotic and frightening. Is there anything more badass? I want that theme to start playing whenever I enter a crowded room.

I don’t generally believe in luck when it comes to producing art, but I’m left with no other explanation for how John Powell managed to produce the masterpiece that was the soundtrack to the first movie (and most of the second). It’s baffling.

Now, to talk more specifically about the score of the third movie: where’s the magic? Where’s the exotic Vikingness? There are still some of the same themes playing, and some of the same instruments, but it all felt lacking in character. Some themes were reused (which is to be expected) but usually in a sped-up form (like in “New ‘New Tail’”), which is hardly ever pleasant (if anything, slowed-down themes work better in my view), and the new themes were rather anonymous. Ask yourself: would you be able to hum any of the new themes right now?

There was a roughness, a texture, an originality to the first soundtrack that is lacking here. Some tracks have gotten more complex, sure, some have evolved, but some have only gotten noisier as a result. Worse still, as many as half of them were missing any character, and could have easily been used in any other action movie. In fact, maybe it’s just me, but I sometimes got a distinct a John Williams’ Star Wars vibe from parts of some of the HTTYD3 tracks, like in “Exodus!” or “Killer Dragons” or “Riders Return”, which did not fit the HTTYD soundscape in my view. And hearing the briefest celtic flute in those tracks only added insult to injury.

Worst of all, there were even tracks which I found downright unpleasant, like “Night Fury Killer”, a lazy, cookie-cutter suspense track that could have been taken straight from any other mediocre Hollywood action flick of the nineties. There were no _bad_ tracks in the previous two movies by the way.

That’s not to say I hated the soundtrack. Parts of “Third Date” (by far my favourite track of the movie) were distinctly HTTYD, yet with a completely new, pleasant vibe. I can actually say I loved that particular track, and I may not be the only one who did, as, of the tracks that don’t recycle the established themes of the franchise, it’s the most watched one on youtube (as of writing this review). “With Love Comes a Great Waterfall” also had its moments, particularly the new theme with the strings, though it lasted very little. And the second half of “Raiders Return” shows what the proper evolution of a familiar theme should be.

Still, with the exception of “Third Date”, I got goosebumps only when the old themes played almost entirely the same (not sped up), and it wasn’t pure nostalgia-factor, for I remember getting goosebumps _every single time_ I saw the first movie in the theaters when it first came out in 2010. (I went 5 times, 4 of which by myself. In fact, I remember taking a bus to some faraway movie theater to catch the last screening in the region, and having the theater completely to myself. Best movie-going experience ever. I still wonder to this day if my ticket price covered their electricity bill… but I digress.)

All in all, this was a good soundtrack, but not a great one. As for the voice acting I think it’s comparable to the other two movies. The sound effects were also excellent. Overall, I’d give the Audio aspect of this movie a **7/10** , which translates to a **2.1/3**.


	6. ASPECT 3 of 4: VISUALS AND ANIMATION

_High budget TV, with extra glitter_

 

The animation has come a long way, clearly, but the art that’s being produced with it, sadly, not so much. I know that, in sequels, studios want to find new ways to impress and amaze, but adding more colours and fluorescence is not the way to go in my view. There is such a thing as sensory overload.

I’m mainly referring to Berk’s new absurd architecture, and most gravely to the hidden world’s design. I do understand _why_ they had to make this last one look like a shiny Bangkok strip-club (they wanted to keep kids from realizing it was actually an underground gulag) but they should have dialed it down a lot. You could even tell this movie was going to suffer from sequel-syndrome by the mere poster. It was like seeing an even more childish version of Pandora (from Avatar).

Remember the poster of the first movie? It was simple, clean, elegant, and it captured a magical moment. I’ll go as far as to say that it was beautiful, as I had it as my desktop wallpaper for years (after photoshopping it to a widescreen format). There were no flashy colors and crowds. It was all about the emotion and symbolism. Then, what happened? After the success of the first movie they probably smelled money and went straight back to pandering to young audiences with flashy colours and cliché compositions. “ _Look how wide our cast is! Look how much fun they are having!_ _Look how many colors! You like colours don’t you, you gullible little cash-cows?”_

Now, regarding the actual animation, it has clearly improved a lot, though melee fights still look like a clash of rubber marionettes for some reason. It was fun in Kung Fu Panda, because it did not take itself too seriously and it wore its unrealism on its sleeve. (Besides, Poe _was_ a rubber balloon in the first place.) Here, alas, it did bother me a little bit. I had never noticed this in the first two movies because there were hardly any melee fights. Here, however, that’s no longer the case, and the result looks a bit silly. They should have avoided portraying melee fights, and, assuming it was unavoidable, at least they should have hired a martial artist or an expert in medieval warfare to choreograph them better. The absence of one (or the incompetence of the one hired, if one was) was too obvious.

As for the photography, (assuming one can talk about photography in an animated picture) it was also rather underwhelming. Think about the moments of all three movies you would want to print and frame and hang on a wall. Both the first and the second movie had plenty of beautiful frames like that, with some truly magnificent compositions, yet I can’t find nearly as many or as beautiful in this third movie. Toothless meeting the Light Fury for the first time and his inauguration into kinghood may hold the best candidates, but can those scenes really compare in any way against Toothless hovering face to face with Cloudjumper above the clouds at sunset as Hiccup meets the masked woman? Or against Hiccup extending his arm at Toothless for the first time in the cove? Or even the silhouette of Hiccup walking alone into the misty forest searching the downed dragon? I maintain there are no such worthy shots in the third movie.

And since I mentioned the animation improving, I still don’t think it was used to its full potential. The action scenes were rather disorienting, and the flying scenes were ok, but again they could still not compare to the thrill of the first movie’s flights. (This was a complaint I had to a lesser degree with the second movie as well). I know there is just no way to recreate the feeling one gets from seeing Hiccup scream “yeah!” in the first movie, after dodging the sea-stacks, thus proving that he has finally learnt how to use the tailfin without his cheat-sheet (probably one of the best-written flight scenes in movie history), but in the sequels it looks like they didn’t try particularly hard to make flying on a Night Fury look like the amazing roller coaster it should be. In other words, at no point did I find myself holding my breath.

It may be that the slow (and rather miserable) death of 3D has made the animators care less about visual roller coasters than they used to. Or perhaps they had spent all their animation budget on the UV-lit concentration camp. I guess we’ll never know.

Still, there were a few major visual improvements that actually caught me off guard: the textures, and, most of all, the natural light. The light was especially amazing. It was even more spectacular than in HTTYD2. I just wish that, in maybe ten years, when the price of 3D rendering falls further, they’ll re-render HTTYD1 with all the new textures, reflections, flesh-motion, and light effects of HTTYD3. Sadly, I don’t see it happening, but I can still hope; I’d be willing to pay ten times the price for the 4k HDR version of that. It would almost feel like possessing a Van Gogh or an ancient Greek statue at home, an immortal piece of near-perfect art.

In conclusion, my overall rating for the Visual aspect of this movie is **8/10** which translates to **2.4/3**.


	7. CONCLUSION and FINAL RATING

If I believed such things, I might think that some stars aligned this year (not in the good way), for this last one seems to have been a year of great disappointments, at least with regard to three of my favourite franchises. How to Train your Dragon 3 ended on a middle finger to its audience, Game of Thrones turned into its own parody (though some more observant people than I had foreseen its demise long ago), and "FLCL"’s reboot was an utter kick in the groin (which, this time, I had foreseen). To make matters worse, nothing exceptional has come out of Hollywood yet this year, nor is there anything exciting planned on this year’s horizon; only remakes and cash grabs. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the Witcher’s series, though I won’t be holding my breath.

Now, I’m not going to say that each and every person who loved this movie has fallen prey to self-deceit (though I don’t mind if I give the impression of implying it), yet I still cannot fathom the absurd scarcity of criticism. Had more outrage for this movie reverberated within the fandom, I would have probably never considered writing this, my very first review. Unfortunately, for better or worse, here we are.

Nonetheless, despite everything I’ve said, I must admit I’m still quite enamoured with the franchise. This critique is merely the outcome of a harsh fight within myself: a fight between my infatuation with the whole saga and my intellectual integrity. The latter, in the end, must always take precedence. I’m still glad, for the sake of the franchise, that there are many people around loving this movie and praising it to high heaven. I’m just distraught that I cannot be among them.

To conclude, my final rating for “How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World”, as some of you may have already calculated, is the following:

  * STORY: 0.60/3
  * AUDIO: 2.10/3
  * VISUALS: 2.40/3
  * ENJOYMENT: -1
  * \--------------------------
  * **Total: 4.10/10**
  * \--------------------------
  * **Rounded down: 4/10**



As for the ratings of the previous two movies:

** How to Train Your Dragon 1: **

  * STORY: 2.25/3
  * AUDIO: 2.85/3
  * VISUALS: 2.40/3
  * ENJOYMENT: +1
  * \--------------------------
  * **Total: 8.5/10**
  * \--------------------------
  * **Rounded up*: 9/10**



*As the movie that made me an obsessed fan of the franchise, rounding can only be upwards in this case. Just for reference, out of 1088 titles, there are only 14 movies I ever rated 9/10, and only 4 to which I bestowed a 10/10 rating.

** How to Train Your Dragon 2: **

  * STORY: 1.20/3
  * AUDIO: 2.55/3
  * VISUALS: 2.55/3
  * ENJOYMENT: +0.5
  * \--------------------------
  * Total: 6.8/10
  * \--------------------------
  * **Rounded up*: 7/10**



*Rounded up again, as the margin was not very large, and, as a fan of the franchise, I feel I should be allowed some favoritism… right?

To summarise the ratings:

HTTYD1: **9** /10

HTTYD2: **7** /10

HTTYD3: **4** /10

* * *

 


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